Cost-effective and efficient plum-pudding-like FexNi1-xS2/C composite electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction

A big challenge for practical electrochemical water splitting is to develop cost-effective and efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we develop a facile strategy using duck blood for the fabrication of plum-pudding-like FexNi1-xS2/C (FNS/C) composite with carbon as a conductive scaffold and FexNi1-xS2 as active sites. The resulting electrodes exhibited remarkable catalytic efficiency and stability for OER with a low overpotential of 248 mV to reach the current density of 10 mA cm−2 along with a small Tafel slope of 43 mV dec−1 in alkaline media. The systematic experiments reveal that the enhanced performance is ascribed to the synergy of bimetal, reduced charge transfer resistance and the porous structure, and the sulfides were partially converted into oxyhydroxides during OER as the real active sites. Therefore, this work provides an intriguing solution to explore efficient, robust and inexpensive catalysts for practical generation of renewable fuels.