Iron Doped Transition Metal Telluride Catalysts For Oxygen Generation From Water Splitting

In recent years,with the rapid development of world science and technique,the demand for power is more and more.The reserves of traditional fossil energy on the earth are limited,and more by-products are easily generated during use,causing irreversible damage to the environment.Clean energy has attracted people’s more and more attention,such as wind energy,solar energy,tidal energy,hydrogen energy,etc.Among them,hydrogen has greater specific heat energy and can be regenerated and does not generate any other harmful by-products during use.The water splitting to produce hydrogen is an environmentally friendly way.The electrocatalytic water splitting consists of two half-reactions,one of which is the oxygen evolution reaction(OER)on the anode electrode.Due to the multi-step proton-electron coupling complex transfer process in OER,the overall reaction process is relatively slow and the efficiency is very low,which has become the bottleneck of hydrogen production technology by water splitting.Therefore,the development of efficient OER catalysts is the key to the hydrogen production technology by water splitting.1.The Fe-doped nickel tellurium compound catalyst was used in the OER.The tellurium precursor was firstly prepared by the hydrothermal method,and then the Fe-doped nickel tellurium(Fe-NiTe)compound was synthesized by using trimethylene glycol as a solvent and adding the Fe,Ni precursor to the three-necked flask.The spectral analysis found that Fe doping in this work was different from the surface adsorption and doping reported in other literature.The cyclic voltammetry(CV),chronoamperometry(CA),and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy(EIS)were used to study the catalytic OER performance of Fe-NiTe,which showed that the incorporation of Fe can significantly improve the OER performance of NiTe.By adjusting the Fe content in the precursor,we further explored the effect of Fe doping on OER performance.2.The Fe-doped cobalt tellurium compound catalyst was used in water splitting to produce oxygen.Fe-doped cobalt tellurium compound(Fe-CoTe)was synthesized by the solvent-heat method.High catalytic stability,kinetic rate,and catalytic efficiency were found on the Fe-CoTe catalyst.The formation of the high state of Co and lattice oxygen on the surface of Fe-CoTe was proved by physical characterization and electrochemical testing.The surface structure changes caused by Fe doping will be beneficial to improve OER performance.Interestingly,the excellent catalytic performance of Fe-CoTe can be due to the improved intrinsic activity under the synergistic action of bimetals,rather than the adsorption of Fe impurities from the electrolyte.The catalytic activity of the catalyst was regulated by changing the proportion of Fe in the precursor.The results showed that Fe-CoTe has excellent catalytic activity for electrochemical oxygen production.3.The Fe-doped molybdenum telluride compound catalyst was used water splitting to produce oxygen.Fe doped on tellurium nanorods coated with an amorphous molybdenum layer was named as Fe-MoTe,and the optimal catalytic performance was obtained by adjusting the proportion of added Fe.Transmission electron microscopy images showed that Fe is uniformly doped on the surface of amorphous molybdenum-coated tellurium nanorods.X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and electrochemical curves showed that the incorporation of Fe enhances the surface electron valence of molybdenum,which is conducive to the electrochemical oxygen generation,and significantly improves the OER performance of the Fe-MoTe catalyst.