Overall Water Splitting Catalyzed Efficiently by an Ultrathin Nanosheet-Built, Hollow Ni3S2-Based Electrocatalyst

Making highly efficient catalysts for an overall ​water splitting reaction is vitally important to bring solar/electrical-to-hydrogen energy conversion processes into reality. Herein, the synthesis of ultrathin nanosheet-based, hollow MoOx/Ni3S2 composite microsphere catalysts on nickel foam, using ammonium molybdate as a precursor and the triblock copolymer pluronic P123 as a structure-directing agent is reported. It is also shown that the resulting materials can serve as bifunctional, non-noble metal electrocatalysts with high activity and stability for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) as well as the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Thanks to their unique structural features, the materials give an impressive water-splitting current density of 10 mA cm−2 at ≈1.45 V with remarkable durability for >100 h when used as catalysts both at the cathode and the anode sides of an alkaline electrolyzer. This performance for an overall water splitting reaction is better than even those obtained with an electrolyzer consisting of noble metal-based Pt/C and IrOx/C catalytic couple—the benchmark catalysts for HER and OER, respectively.