An active ZnxNi1-xS@Mo2C/carbon cloth electrode as efficient catalyst for water electrolysis

Abstract Electrolysis of water is a promising method for production of the green-energy hydrogen, which is commonly assisted by high powerful catalyst. At present, developing low-cost and highly efficient electrocatalysts has attracted increasing attention. Herein, a novel composited catalyst of ZnxNi1-xS@Mo2C loaded on conductive carbon cloth (ZnxNi1-xS@Mo2C/CC) is successfully prepared by the hydrothermal method. Due to the abundant active sites of defect structures induced by the surface engineering, the prepared ZnxNi1-xS@Mo2C/CC shows outstanding electrocatalytic performances in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting, with low overpotential of 230 mV and 150 mV at 10 mA cm−2, respectively. The ZnxNi1-xS@Mo2C/CC as an OER/HER bifunctional catalyst for overall water splitting affords a stable voltage of 1.56 V @ current density of 10 mA cm−2. Moreover, the catalyst shows an outstanding stability after a series of electrochemical tests. This work expands the multi-field applications of carbon cloth-supported materials as efficient non-precious metal-based electrocatalysts, with great importance in sustainable energy-relative technologies.