Controllable synthesis of self-templated hierarchical Ni3S2@N-doped carbon for enhanced oxygen evolution reaction

Rational construction of self-supporting electrodes has been extensively investigated in energy conversion and storage. In this work, hierarchical N-doped carbon-encapsulated Ni3S2 grown on a 3D porous Ni foam (H-Ni3S2@NC/NF) was controllably synthesized by a one-pot self-templated solvothermal method. Herein, we highlight the self-templated growth of multilayered Ni3S2 with N-doped carbon intercalation at a certain temperature. The unique H-Ni3S2@NC/NF shows enhanced active sites and a modulated electronic structure, which facilitates mass/electron transport. Thereby, the H-Ni3S2@NC outperforms a lower overpotential of 238 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and a low Tafel slope of 62 mV dec−1 than that of binary and ternary metal sulfides, suggesting an excellent mono-metal sulfide as a self-supporting electrode for oxygen evolution reaction.