Ni3N-V2O3 enables highly efficient 5-(Hydroxymethyl) furfural oxidation enabling membrane free hydrogen production

Abstract Conventional water electrolyzers produce H2 and O2 simultaneously. The sluggish water oxidation reaction (WOR) results in low overall energy conversion efficiency; also the production of O2 is not of economic value. Thus, replacing sluggish anodic water oxidation reaction with 5-(Hydroxymethyl) furfural oxidation reaction (HmfOR) has been considered as a more energy-efficient strategy to produce hydrogen. Here, Ni3N incorporated by V2O3 is synthesized via thermal ammonolysis, which shows excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and HmfOR. The electrocatalyst has strong tolerance to Hmf, which avoids the use of membrane. The Ni3N-V2O3 hybrids shows a low overpotential of 53 mV for HER, and a low overpotential of 230 mV for HmfOR, which is below 140 mV for WOR at 10 mA cm−2. When Ni3N-V2O3 is employed as a bifunctional electrode, it offers a cell voltage of only 1.40 V at 10 mA cm−2 for continuously hydrogen production.