In Situ Growth of Amorphous Fe(OH)₃ on Nickel Nitrate Hydroxide Nanoarrays for Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution

Development of highly efficient electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is urgently demanded by the clean hydrogen energy. Herein, in order to further boost the OER activity of metal nitrate hydroxide materials, amorphous Fe(OH)3 layer is in situ grown on nickel nitrate hydroxide (NiNH) nanoarrays supported on nickel foam (NF) through an interfacial hydrolysis approach, where the loading amount of the Fe(OH)3 can be simply manipulated by the hydrolysis time. Taking advantage of the synergy of Fe(OH)3 and NiNH, the optimized Fe(OH)3@NiNH/NF sample shows a very promising electrocatalytic OER activity in 1 M KOH solution, requiring a very low overpotential of 212 mV vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) to deliver a geometrical catalytic current density of 100 mA cm–2 and a low Tafel slope of 49 mV dec–1. This work provides a new strategy for boosting the electrocatalytic activity of metal hydroxide nitrates through the interface engineering.