Facile fabrication of MOF-decorated nickel iron foam for highly efficient oxygen evolution

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as efficient electrocatalysts due to the features of high specific surface area, rich pore structure and diversified composition. It is still challenging to synthesize self-supporting MOF-based catalysts using simple and low-cost fabrication methods. Herein, we successfully fabricated Ni-doped MIL-53(Fe) supported on nickel-iron foam (Ni-MIL-53(Fe)/NFF) as efficient electrocatalyst. A facile two-step solvothermal method without adding any metal salts was used, which can simplify the fabrication process and reduce the experimental cost. In the fabrication process, the bimetallic Ni-MIL-53(Fe)/NFF was in situ converted from an intermediate NiFe2O4/NFF. The obtained material exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic oxygen evolution performance with a low overpotential of 248 mV at 50 mA cm−2, and a small Tafel slope of 46.4 mV dec−1. This work sheds light on the simple and efficient preparation of bimetallic MOF-based material, which is promising in electrocatalysts.