One stone two birds: Vanadium doping as dual roles in self-reduced Pt clusters and accelerated water splitting

Integrating active Pt clusters into transition-metal oxides with water-dissociation ability is effective to prepare a bifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting in alkaline. However, the additional utilization of a reductant and/or the operation at the elevating temperature causes the over-growth and agglomeration of Pt clusters, thus losing the high catalytic performance. Herein, we report that V dopant not only favors self-reducing Pt clusters on NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) (Pt/NiFeV) at room temperature, but also regulates interfacial charge redistribution to enhance the water-splitting performance. Experimental and theoretical studies reveal that V dopant into NiFe LDH triggers more electrons to transfer to adjacent Fe atoms, thus leading to a higher reducing ability compared to that without V-doping. When used as water-splitting electrocatalyst, V doping promotes electron loss of Pt clusters in Pt/NiFeV, optimizing the free energy of hydrogen adsorption and proton recombination kinetics at the cathode. Meanwhile, it also moves the d-band center of Ni away from the Fermi level to optimize the adsorption of *OH intermediates and facilitate the desorption of oxygen molecules at the anode. Thereby, Pt/NiFeV exhibits much higher bifunctional performance than V-free Pt/NiFe LDH toward both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This work can spark inspiration of designing other bifunctional electrocatalysts for energy conversion and storage.