Nickel oxide/porous reduced graphene oxide as active hybrid material for oxygen evolution reaction

Porous reduced graphene oxide (prGO) possesses all the advantages of rGO nanosheets for electrochemical sensing (1) such as increased active area and facilitated mass transport, both being advantageous for sensitive sensing. Surprisingly is that while prGO architectures have been widely used for the fabrication of high-performance energy storage devices (2,3), the use of prGO for sensing is limited to some reports. Here, a simple and efficient routine is presented by decoration of prGO with nickel oxide (NiO) particles. The morphology of NiO-prGO was investigated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). In alkaline media, the carbon paste electrode (CPE) modified with NiO-prGO catalyses oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with an onset potential of 0.6 V (vs. Ag|AgCl|KCl3M), showing a synergistic effect between prGO and NiO particles. After the long-term I-t measurment, high electrochemical stability confirms the improved electrocatalytic performance of NiO-prGO. This study affords us NiO-prGO based electrocatalyst with high performance and strong durability under alkaline conditions, which can be applied to energy conversion and storage.