Quasi-graphene-envelope Fe-doped Ni2P sandwiched nanocomposites for enhanced water splitting and lithium storage performance
- 25 March 2015
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Journal of Materials Chemistry A
- Vol. 3 (18), 9587-9594
- https://doi.org/10.1039/c5ta01103e
Abstract
Developing advanced graphene-based composites is significant for the development of renewable green energy technology. Herein, we report a sandwich-like graphene-based composite (i.e., Fe-doped Ni2P nanoparticles encapsulated by a graphene-like envelope), which is synthesized by the first polymerization of glucose (as a green carbon source) on the Fe-doped NiNH4PO4·H2O nanosheet surface followed by high temperature annealing. The annealing process will crystallize the coated polymer into multilayer graphene, as the same time the Fe-doped precursor is decomposed into Fe-doped Ni2P ((Fe)Ni2P) nanoparticles encapsulated by the graphene envelope ((Fe)Ni2P/graphene). When evaluated as a water splitting catalyst in acidic solutions, the graphene-encapsulated Fe-doped Ni2P exhibits a low overpotential (∼50 mV) and a small Tafel slope (∼45 mV per decade) in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. More importantly, the (Fe)Ni2P/graphene composite shows an excellent stability in acid solutions in contrast to conventional Ni-based catalysts. On the other hand, owing to the structural advantage (i.e., efficient inner volume space for the nanoparticle expansion, high porosity for the electrolyte diffusion and high conductivity), the (Fe)Ni2P/graphene nanocomposite exhibits a high specific capacity of 642 mA h g−1 at 0.2 C and excellent cycling stability (93% retained after 200 cycles).Keywords
Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (21373280, 21403019)
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