Exceptional electrocatalytic oxygen evolution efficiency and stability from electrodeposited NiFe alloy on Ni foam

Highlights: • The composition of plating bath utilized in our work are FeCl₂ and NiCl₂, which can realize fast deposition of NiFe. • The impacts of the deposition condition, the plating bath and the Fe contents on the OER performance of NiFe alloy were discussed. • We prepared different Ni substrates and compared the ECSA of NiFe deposited onto different substrates. • NiFe/NF in our work has been confirmed to have the suprerior OER performance. -- Abstract: Highly efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) hold their promises in renewable energy technologies such as water splitting. Herein, we reported a fast electrodeposition of highly efficient NiFe alloy onto three-dimension nickel foam (NF). Benefiting from the hierarchical structure, NiFe/NF exhibits high OER efficiency with a low onset potential and a low overpotential (191 mV at 10 mA cm⁻²), which outperforms the commercial catalyst and most reported catalysts up-to-date. Also, it shows a remarkably low Tafel slope of 44.1 mV as well as a long-time stability that the potential increased less than 10 mV after 30000 s OER at 100 mA cm⁻². NiFe/NF is expected to surpass the commercial catalyst to serve as a non-noble-metal-based electrocatalyst for OER practical application.