Pearson’s Principle-Inspired Robust 2D Amorphous Ni-Fe-Co Ternary Hydroxides on Carbon Textile for High-Performance Electrocatalytic Water Splitting

Abstract

Layered double hydroxide (LDH) is widely used in electrocatalytic water splitting due to its good structural tunability, high intrinsic activity, and mild synthesis conditions, especially for flexible fiber-based catalysts. However, the poor stability of the interface between LDH and flexible carbon textile prepared by hydrothermal and electrodeposition methods greatly affects its active area and cyclic stability during deformation. Here, we report a salt-template-assisted method for the growth of two-dimensional (2D) amorphous ternary LDH based on dip-rolling technology. The robust and high-dimensional structure constructed by salt-template and fiber could achieve a carbon textile-based water splitting catalyst with high loading, strong catalytic activity, and good stability. The prepared 2D NiFeCo-LDH/CF electrode showed overpotentials of 220 mV and 151 mV in oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution reactions, respectively, and simultaneously had no significant performance decrease after 100 consecutive bendings. This work provides a new strategy for efficiently designing robust, high-performance LDH on flexible fibers, which may have great potential in commercial applications.

Keywords

• layered hydroxide
• ternary
• amorphous
• Pearson’s principle
• electrocatalytic water splitting