Alloying-Triggered Phase Engineering of NiFe System via Laser-Assisted Al Incorporation for Full Water Splitting

It is challenging to design one non-noble material with balanced bifunctional performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for commercial sustainability at a low cost since the different electrocatalytic mechanisms are not easily matchable for each other. Herein, a self-standing hybrid system Ni18Fe12Al70, consisting of Ni2Al3 and Ni3Fe phases, was constructed by laser-assisted aluminum (Al) incorporation towards full water splitting. It was found that the incorporation of Al could effectively tune the morphologies, compositions and phases. The results indicate that Ni18Fe12Al70 delivers an extremely low overpotential to trigger both HER (eta(100)=188 mV) and OER (eta(100)=345 mV) processes and maintains a stable overpotential for 100 h, comparable to state-of-the-art electrocatalysts. The synergistic effect of Ni2Al3 and Ni3Fe alloys on the HER process is confirmed based on theoretical calculation.