Ga doping Enhances Oxygen Evolution Reaction Performance and stability of NiFe layered double hydroxides

NiFe layered double hydroxides (NiFe-LDH), as a promising non-precious metal Oxygen Evolution Reaction(OER) catalyst, suffers from the inherent limitations of poor conductivity and insufficient exposure of active sites, coupled with the phenomenon of activity decline at its high current densities, which severely restricts its application in OER. Here, we propose a structurally defective strategy to prepare a self-assembled ultrathin nanosheet structure by introducing Ga3+ ion, and in situ growth of NiFeGa-LDH@NF on nickel foam (NF) to improve its OER performance, and the incorporation of Ga3+ reduces the average thickness of the nanosheets from 4-5 nm to 1-2 nm, which significantly increases the catalyst activity surface area, and further optimized its electronic structure causing the charge transfer resistance a significant decrease. The optimized NiFeGa-LDH@NF provides a high current density of 100 mA cm-2 at an overpotential of 252 mV, which is 43 mV lower than that of the pure NiFe-LDH@NF. Moreover, the voltage changes by only 1.3% after 72 h at a constant current density of 50 mA cm-2, showing its excellent stability. This work presents a new perspective to increase its structural defects by the introduction of transition metal ions and demonstrates the effect on OER performance, providing a new line of thought for the development of higher performance OER electrocatalysts.