Preparation Of Hydrophilic Graphene And Nickel Composite Electrode Materials And The Electrocatalytic Activity For Hydrogen Evolution

The limited fossil fuels energy in nature is decreasing while the demand for energy in industrial development is increasing.Undoubtedly,this requires people to explore clean energy recycled as well as less pollution to the environment.Hydrogen has the advantage of being recyclable,and electrolysis of water is a safe and feasible method,however,there is a fatal defect of expensive cost caused by the large overvoltage for hydrogen evolution.A number of work is devoted to the development of cost-effective electrode materials to reduce hydrogen evolution reaction overpotential,Ni and Ni-based electrode materials are proposed as one of the most appropriate cathode materials for hydrogen evolution reaction due to their effective catalysts and low cost.In this paper,Ni-hydrophilic graphene(Ni-HG/NF),Ni-hydrophilic graphene-reduced graphene oxide(Ni-HG-rGO/NF)and Ni-carbon nanotubes-Hydrophilic graphene(Ni-CNTs-HG/NF)composite cathodes were prepared by electrodeposition.The morphology,structure and composition of the composite electrodes were analyzed by XRD,TEM,XPS,BET,CS,SEM EDS and so on,and the electrochemical performance tests were from the CHI660.It can be concluded that the effects of different composite phase and concentration of composite phase on morphology,structure by analyzing the experimental results,and electrochemical properties have been described systematicaly.Electrodeposited Ni nanoparticles,hydrophilic graphene layers on Ni foam to synthesize Ni-HG/NF catalysts,which can makes the metal settled layer become much thinner and more evenly distributed.The amount of hydrophilic graphene added makes a great contrubution to improving the performance of the Ni-HG/NF catalysts.The electrochemical measurements exhibit that the best performance is achieved on all the hydrophilic graphene-reduced graphene oxide samples prepared from the optimal hydrophilic graphene concentration(0.5 g/L).Ni-HG-rGO/NF composite electrodes were prepared with hydrophilic graphene and graphene oxide(GO)as the composite phase.When the ratio of hydrophilic graphene to graphene oxide is 1:1,the Ni-HG-rGO/NF composite electrodes presented a Datura-like shape,which increasing the surface area of the Ni nanoparticles to facilitate the catalytic activity of Ni for hydrogen evolution reaction.The Ni-CNTs-HG/NF catalyst was also prepared via a one-step way to co-electrodeposit Ni nanoparticles,and carbon nanotubes(CNTs)and hydrophilic graphene as the composite phase.Compared to Ni-CNTs/NF and Ni-HG/NF electrocatalysts,the Ni-CNTs-HG/NF electrocatalyst exhibits the more hydrogen evolution reaction performance in alkaline electrolytes.