Honeycomb-like Ni-Mo-S on Ni foam as superior bifunctional electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution and urea oxidation

It is still a challenge to prepare highly-efficient electrocatalysts through a facile and controllable technology for hydrogen production. Herein, a simple electrochemical deposition method was designed for the preparation of honeycomb-like nickel-molybdenum-sulfur amorphous microstructures on the nickel foam (labeled as NiMoS/NF), which exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and urea oxidation reaction (UOR). The as-deposited NiMoS/NF electrode merely required overpotential of 37 mV to reach the current density of 10 mA cm−2 for HER in 1.0 M KOH solution, and presented ultralong durability above 310 h at 10 mA cm−2. In a mixed solution of 1.0 M KOH and 0.5 M urea, simultaneously, 1.015 V of overpotential was needed to generate the current density of 100 mA cm−2 for UOR. In a two-electrode cell with the electrolyte of 1.0 M KOH and 0.5 M urea, a voltage of 1.377 V was demanded to deliver the current density of 10 mA cm−2. The present work shows that the electrodeposition technology is a simple and feasible approach to construct robust and highly-active electrocatalysts for H2 production.