Improving the Electrocatalytic Activity of a Nickel-Organic Framework toward the Oxygen Evolution Reaction through Vanadium Doping

Abstract

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been considered as potential oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts owning to their ultra-thin structure, adjustable composition, high surface area, and high porosity. Here, we designed and fabricated a vanadium-doped nickel organic framework (V1−x−NixMOF) system by using a facile two-step solvothermal method on nickel foam (NF). The doping of vanadium remarkably elevates the OER activity of V1−x−NixMOF, thus demonstrating better performance than the corresponding single metallic Ni-MOF, NiV-MOF and RuO2 catalysts at high current density (>400 mA cm−2). V0.09−Ni0.91MOF/NF provides a low overpotential of 235 mV and a small Tafel slope of 30.3 mV dec−1 at a current density of 10 mA cm−2. More importantly, a water-splitting device assembled with Pt/C/NF and V0.09−Ni0.91MOF/NF as cathode and anode yielded a cell voltage of 1.96 V@1000 mA cm−2, thereby outperforming the-state-of-the-art RuO2(+)||Pt/C(−). Our work sheds new insight on preparing stable, efficient OER electrocatalysts and a promising method for designing various MOF-based materials.