Development of Binder-Free Three-Dimensional Honeycomb-like Porous Ternary Layered Double Hydroxide-Embedded MXene Sheets for Bi-Functional Overall Water Splitting Reactions

• Published in: Nanomaterials
• Main Authors: Sajjad Hussain, Dhanasekaran Vikraman, Ghazanfar Nazir, Muhammad Taqi Mehran, Faisal Shahzad, Khalid Mujasam Batoo, Hyun-Seok Kim, Jongwan Jung
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2022-08-01
• Subjects: LDH; water splitting; HER; OER; MXene
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-4991/12/16/2886

In this study, a honeycomb-like porous-structured nickel–iron–cobalt layered double hydroxide/Ti₃C₂T_x (NiFeCo–LDH@MXene) composite was successfully fabricated on a three-dimensional nickel foam using a simple hydrothermal approach. Owing to their distinguishable characteristics, the fabricated honeycomb porous-structured NiFeCo–LDH@MXene composites exhibited outstanding bifunctional electrocatalytic activity for pair hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions in alkaline medium. The developed NiFeCo–LDH@MXene electrocatalyst required low overpotentials of 130 and 34 mV to attain a current density of 10 mA cm⁻² for OER and HER, respectively. Furthermore, an assembled NiFeCo–LDH@MXene‖NiFeCo–LDH@MXene device exhibited a cell voltage of 1.41 V for overall water splitting with a robust firmness for over 24 h to reach 10 mA cm⁻² current density, signifying outstanding performance for water splitting reactions. These results demonstrated the promising potential of the designed 3D porous NiFeCo–LDH@MXene sheets as outstanding candidates to replace future green energy conversion devices.