Bimetallic Fe/Ni-BTC MOF decorated MXene hybrid for improved oxidation of water

Electrochemical production of green hydrogen via water-splitting is an emerging technology to generate a substitute source of energy. However, due to the slow kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction (OER), high cost, lesser availability and easy oxidation of noble metal-based electrocatalysts led the explorers to find an efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts. In the current communication, we have developed a synthesis strategy for the preparation of hybrid electrocatalyst composed of bimetallic (iron, nickel) based metal organic framework (FeNiBTC MOF) and MXene (Ti3C2Tx) via solvothermal reaction. Thanks to the ultrathin heterostructure with high electrical conductivity of MXene, with abundant active sites of FeNiBTC MOF, the as-prepared hybrid electrocatalyst FeNiBTC@MXene, leads the high efficiency OER in an alkaline environment. FeNiBTC MOF was impeccably decorated on the surfaces of MXene nanosheets with different FeNiBTC to MXene ratios and was characterized via pXRD, FESEM/EDS, XPS and BET. The optimized hybrid structured catalyst (FeNiBTC@Mx-3) revealed the best performance for OER with a low overpotential of 210 mV vs. RHE at a current density of 10 mA/cm2 and a Tafel plot value of 38.4 mV/dec and stable up to 1000th CV cycles.