Non-Noble Metal High-Entropy Alloy-Based Catalytic Electrode for Long-Life Hydrogen Gas Batteries

• Published in: ACS nano 2024-02, Vol.18 (5), p.4229-4240
• Main Authors: Liu, Shuang, Wang, Ying, Jiang, Taoli, Jin, Song, Sajid, Muhammad, Zhang, Zuodong, Xu, Jingwen, Fan, Yanpeng, Wang, Xiaoyang, Chen, Jinghao, Liu, Zaichun, Zheng, Xinhua, Zhang, Kai, Nian, Qingshun, Zhu, Zhengxin, Peng, Qia, Ahmad, Touqeer, Li, Ke, Chen, Wei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1936-0851; 1936-086X
• DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c09482

The development of efficient, stable, and low-cost bifunctional catalysts for the hydrogen evolution/oxidation reaction (HER/HOR) is critical to promote the application of hydrogen gas batteries in large scale energy storage systems. Here we demonstrate a non-noble metal high-entropy alloy grown on Cu foam (NNM-HEA@CF) as a self-supported catalytic electrode for nickel-hydrogen gas (Ni-H2) batteries. Experimental and theoretical calculation results reveal that the NNM-HEA catalyst greatly facilitates the HER/HOR catalytic process through the optimized electronic structures of the active sites. The assembled Ni-H2 battery with NNM-HEA@CF as the anode shows excellent rate capability and exceptional cycling performance of over 1800 h without capacity decay at an areal capacity of 15 mAh cm–2. Furthermore, a scaled-up Ni-H2 battery fabricated with an extended capacity of 0.45 Ah exhibits a high cell-level energy density of ∼109.3 Wh kg–1. Moreover, its estimated cost reaches as low as ∼107.8 $ kWh–1 based on all key components of electrodes, separator and electrolyte, which is reduced by more than 6 times compared to that of the commercial Pt/C-based Ni-H2 battery. This work provides an approach to develop high-efficiency non-noble metal-based bifunctional catalysts for hydrogen batteries in large-scale energy storage applications.