Nickel Nitride Particles Supported on 2D Activated Graphene–Black Phosphorus Heterostructure: An Efficient Electrocatalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

Hydrogen is regarded as the most promising green clean energy in the 21st century. Developing the highly efficient and low‐cost electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of great concern for the hydrogen industry. In the water electrolyzed reaction, the overpotential and the kinetics are the main hurdles for OER. Therefore, an efficient and durable oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalyst is required. In this study, an activated graphene (AG)–black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets hybrid is fabricated for supporting Ni3N particles (Ni3N/BP‐AG) in the application of OER. The Ni3N particles are combined with the BP‐AG heterostructure via facile mechanical ball milling under argon protection. The synthesized Ni3N/BP‐AG shows excellent catalytic performance toward the OER, demanding the overpotential of 233 mV for a current density of 10 mA cm−2 with a Tafel slope of 42 mV dec−1. The Ni3N/BP‐AG catalysts also show remarkable stability with a retention rate of the current density of about 86.4% after measuring for 10 000 s in potentiostatic mode.A black phosphorus (BP)–activated graphene (AG) heterostructure is designed for supporting nickel nitride (Ni3N) to enhance the performance of oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The Ni3N/BP‐AG exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance toward OER with low overpotential and small Tafel slope. It also shows remarkable stability with a retention rate of ≈86.4% OER activity after 10 000 s.