Molybdenum oxide/nickel molybdenum oxide heterostructures hybridized active platinum co-catalyst toward superb-efficiency water splitting catalysis.

A new catalyst has been developed that utilizes molybdenum oxide (MoO)/nickel molybdenum oxide (NiMoO) heterostructured nanorods coupled with Pt ultrafine nanoparticles for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) toward industrial-grade water splitting. This catalyst has been synthesized using a versatile approach and has shown to perform better than noble-metals catalysts, such as Pt/C and RuO, at industrial-grade current level (≥1000 mA·cm). When used simultaneously as a cathode and anode, the proposed material yields 10 mA·cm at a remarkably small cell voltage of 1.55 V and has shown extraordinary durability for over 50 h. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations have proved that the combination of MoO and NiMoO creates a metallic heterostructure with outstanding charge transfer ability. The DFT calculations have also shown that the excellent chemical coupling effect between the MoO/NiMoO and Pt synergistically optimize the charge transfer capability and Gibbs free energies of intermediate species, leading to remarkably speeding up the reaction kinetics of water electrolysis.