Electrochemical upgrading of biomass ethanol to value-added chemicals is promising for sustainable society. Here, we synthesize defective Ni 3 S 2 nanowires (NWs), which show high activity towards electrochemical oxidation of ethanol to acetate. The Ni 3 S 2 NWs are formed by the oriented attachment mechanism, and rich defects are introduced during the growth. A low onset potential of 1.31 V and high mass activity of 8,716 mAmg Ni −1 at 1.5 V are achieved using the synthesized Ni 3 S 2 NWs toward the ethanol electro-oxidation, which are better than the Ni(OH) 2 NWs and the Ni 3 S 2 nanoparticles (NPs). And the selectivity for the acetate generation is ca. 99%. The high activity of Ni 3 S 2 NWs is attributed to the easier oxidation of Ni(II) to the catalytically active Ni(III) species with the promotion from S component and rich defects. These results demonstrate that the defective NWs can be synthesized by the oriented attachment method and the defective Ni 3 S 2 NWs structure as the efficient non-noble metal electrocatalysts for oxidative upgrading of ethanol.
It is essential to synthesize low-cost, earth-abundant bifunctional electrocatalysts for both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER) for water electrolysis. Herein, we present a one-step sulfurization method to fabricate Ni3S2 nanowires directly grown on Ni foam (Ni3S2 NWs/Ni) as such an electrocatalyst. This synthetic strategy has several advantages including facile preparation, low cost and can even be expanded to large-scale preparation for practical applications. The as-synthesized Ni3S2 NWs/Ni exhibits a low overpotential of 81 and 317 mV to render a current density of 10 mA cm−2 for the HER and OER, respectively, in 1.0 mol l−1 KOH solution. The Ni3S2 NWs/Ni was integrated to be the cathode and the anode in the alkaline electrolyzer for overall water splitting with a current density of 10 mA cm−2 afforded at a cell voltage of 1.63 V. More importantly, this electrolyzer maintained its electrocatalytic activity even after continual water splitting for 30 h. Owing to its simple synthesis process, the earth-abundant electrocatalyst and high performance, this versatile Ni3S2 NWs/Ni electrode will become a promising electrocatalyst for water splitting.
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