Kinetics of hydrogen evolution on nickel electrodes

The mechanism and kinetics of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) was studied in 1 M NaOH on polycrystalline nickel electrodes using potential step charging, open circuit potential decay and ac impedance techniques. It was shown that the potential step charging technique cannot give correct kinetic results because of the experimental limitations. It was found that the experimental curves may be explained assuming the Volmer-Heyrovsky mechanism. New methods of data analysis for the open circuit potential relaxation and ac impedance are proposed.