Operando High‐Valence Cr‐Modified NiFe Hydroxides for Water Oxidation

Abstract

High-valence metal-doped multimetal (oxy)hydroxides outperform noble metal electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) owing to the modified energetics between 3d metals and high-valence dopants. However, the rational design of sufficient and subtle modulators is still challenging. With a multimetal layered double hydroxide (LDH) as the OER catalyst, this study introduces a series of operando high-valence dopants (Cr, Ru, Ce, and V), which can restrict the 3+ valence states in the LDH template to prevent phase separation and operando transfer to the >3+ valence states for sufficient electronic interaction during the OER process. Through density functional theory simulations, ultrathin Cr-doped NiFe (NiFeCr) LDH is synthesized with strong electronic interaction between Cr dopants and NiFe bimetallic sites, evidenced by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The resulting NiFeCr-LDH catalyzes the OER with ultralow overpotentials of 189 and 284 mV, obtaining current densities of 10 and 1000 mA cm^-2 , respectively. Further, a NiFeCr-LDH anode is coupled in the anion exchange membrane electrolyzers to promote alkaline water splitting and CO₂ -to-CO electrolysis, which achieves low full cell voltages at high current densities.