Insights on the Electrocatalytic Seawater Splitting at Heterogeneous Nickel-Cobalt Based Electrocatalysts Engineered from Oxidative Aniline Polymerization and Calcination.

Given the limited access to freshwater compared to seawater, a growing interest surrounds the direct seawater electrolysis to produce hydrogen. However, we currently lack efficient electrocatalysts to selectively perform the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) over the oxidation of the chloride ions that are the main components of seawater. In this contribution, we report an engineering strategy to synthesize heterogeneous electrocatalysts by the simultaneous formation of separate chalcogenides of nickel (NiS, x = 0, 2/3, 8/9, and 4/3) and cobalt (CoS, x = 0 and 8/9) onto a carbon-nitrogen-sulfur nanostructured network.