Urchin-like hierarchical ruthenium cobalt oxide nanosheets on Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene as a binder-free bifunctional electrode for overall water splitting and supercapacitors

• Published in: Nanoscale 2022-01, Vol.14 (4), p.1347-1362
• Main Authors: Asen, Parvin, Esfandiar, Ali, Mehdipour, Hamid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2040-3364; 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/D1NR07145A

Synthesizing efficient electrode materials for water splitting and supercapacitors is essential for developing clean electrochemical energy conversion/storage devices. In the present work, we report the construction of a ruthenium cobalt oxide (RuCo O )/Ti C T MXene hybrid by electrophoretic deposition of Ti C T MXene on nickel foam (NF) followed by RuCo O nanostructure growth through an electrodeposition process. Owing to the strong interactions between RuCo O and Ti C T sheets, which are verified by density functional theory (DFT)-based simulations, RuCo O /Ti C T MXene@NF can serve as a bifunctional electrode for both water splitting and supercapacitor applications. This electrode exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic activity with low overpotentials of 170 and 68 mV at 100 A m toward the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The RuCo O /Ti C T MXene@NF-based alkaline water-splitting cell only requires 1.62 V to achieve a current density of 100 A m , which is much better than that of RuO @NF and Pt/C@NF-assembled cells (1.75 V@100 A m ). The symmetric supercapacitor (SSC)-assembled electrode displays a high specific capacitance of 229 F g at 3 A g . The experimental results, complemented with theoretical insights, provide an effective strategy to prepare multifunctional materials for electrocatalysis and energy storage applications.