Porous CeO2/Ni-Cu composite catalyst for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution in alkaline medium

High-efficiency low-cost and long-term stable hydrogen evolution catalysts play a decisive role in the production of hydrogen energy. Different from many previous studies that use binder to adhere nanoparticles to electrode substates CeO2 nanoparticles are successfully introduced to a porous Ni-Cu substrate without binders in this work. The CeO2-modified Ni-Cu catalyst has abundant active sites which can promote the mass transfer and facilitate the Hatom adsorption of hydrogen evolution reaction. In addition the oxygen vacancies of CeO2 and the synergistic effect between Ce3+ and Ce4+ are manifested during the hydrogen evolution reaction. For producing hydrogen through water electrolysis results show that the obtained porous CeO2/Ni-Cu catalyst presents an overpotential of 72 mV at a current density of 10 mA·cm−2 as well as a long-term stability of more than 24 h. This work provides new idea for the development of the composite catalyst derived from non-precious metals with the stable structure for hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline condition.