Water electrolysis has recently progressed as the most efficient and attractive way of producing hydrogen and oxygen gasses [1]. However, to ensure the effective production of hydrogen and oxygen yielding high current densities at a low overpotential, a catalyst is needed. Present advancements in the water electrolysis process have opened pathways leading to the synthesis of a variety of non-precious materials as electrocatalysts in place of precious materials [2,3]. In this work, we present the hydrothermal synthesis of the non-precious NiFe₂O₄/MoS₂/C nanocomposites to be used as a bifunctional electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for water electrolysis in both alkaline and acidic electrolytes. To increase the conductivity of the NiFe₂O₄/MoS₂/C composite, the material was supported on carbon black. Sonochemistry application was employed as a Post-treatment technique to boost the catalytic activity for NiFe₂O₄/MoS₂/C nanocomposites. The post-treated material showed an intense increase in the catalytic activity of NiFe₂O₄/MoS₂/C nanocomposites. The composites also show comparable activity and durability with commercial Pt/C for HER and RuO₂/C for OER.

Keywords: water electrolysis, NiFe₂O₄/MoS₂, post-treatment, catalytic activity.

References

[1] Shi, Y., Zhang, B. (2016).. Chem. Soc. Rev, 45(6), 1529-1541.

[2] Lv, H., Xi, Z., Chen, Z., Guo, S., Yu, Y., Zhu, W., Mu, S. (2015). J. Am. Chem.Soc, 137(18), 5859-5862.

[3] Xu, X., Sun, Y., Qiao, W., Zhang, X., Chen, X., Song, X., Du, Y. (2017). Appl. Surf. Sci., 396, 1520-1527.