Enhancing Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation of NiFe-LDH Nanosheets via Bismuth-Induced Electronic Structure Engineering.

The design and synthesis of high-efficiency electrocatalysts are of great practical significance in electrocatalytic water splitting, specifically in accelerating the slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, a self-supported bismuth-doped NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanosheet array for water splitting was successfully constructed on nickel foam by a one-step hydrothermal strategy. Benefiting from the abundant active sites of two-dimensional nanosheets and electronic effect of Bi-doped NiFe LDH, the optimal Bi 0.2 NiFe LDH electrocatalyst exhibits excellent OER performance in basic media. It only requires an overpotential of 255 mV to drive 50 mA cm -2 and a low Tafel slope of 57.49 mV dec -1 . The calculation of density functional theory (DFT) further shows that the incorporation of Bi into NiFe LDH could obviously overcome the step of H 2 O adsorption during OER progress. This work provides a simple and effective strategy for improving the electrocatalytic performance of NiFe LDHs, which is of great practical significance.