(558ad) Enhanced Alkaline Oxygen Evolution Using Hybrid Co@Ni12P5/Ppy

Advanced energy systems employing water electrolysis is a pathway towards a clean and sustainable environment. Many potential systems are plagued by the required use of noble metals to achieve performance targets. Effective noble metal free catalysts as electrode materials paves way for large scale industrial implementation of these energy systems. Transition metal-based catalysts have shown excellent potential in water splitting reactions. Incorporating conducting polymer with electronegative atoms can alter the electron density around the metal atom by inducing charge redistribution resulting in altered binding energies of reaction intermediates at the active site. In this regard, we designed a novel hybrid catalyst Co@Ni₁₂P₅/PPy with excellent conducting properties using a scalable solvothermal technique. The hybrid catalyst consists of conducting polymer (Polypyrrole-PPy) moieties with extended electron transfer properties. Electronegative N promotes Ni enrichment at the surface of the microspheres ensuring strong electrostatic interactions between core shell structures. The outer edge of PPy shell anchors electrodeposited Co, thus generating dual M-N active sites. These M-N sites can accelerate the charge transfer properties amongst different layers of the hybrid catalyst, introducing novel synergic interactions. Owing to extended electron conjugation, dual synergic sites: Co-N and Ni-N, and enriched Ni content at the core-shell interface, this catalyst shows four times higher current density than the state of art RuO₂ with a low tafel slope of 48 mV/dec. The catalyst shows excellent stability even after 500 cycles of CV and 10000 s of chronoamperometry.