Boosting the electrocatalytic performance of NiFe layered double hydroxides for the oxygen evolution reaction by exposing the highly active edge plane (012)

The intrinsic activity of NiFe layer double hydroxides (LDHs) for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) suffers from its predominantly exposed (003) basal plane, which is thought to have poor activity. Herein, we construct a hierarchal structure of NiFe LDH nanosheet-arrays-on-microplates (NiFe NSAs-MPs) to elevate the electrocatalytic activity of NiFe LDHs for the OER by exposing a high-activity plane, such as the (012) edge plane. It is surprising that the NiFe NSAs-MPs show activity of 100 mA cm(−2) at an overpotential (η) of 250 mV, which is five times higher than that of (003) plane-dominated NiFe LDH microsheet arrays (NiFe MSAs) at the same η, representing the excellent electrocatalytic activity for the OER in alkaline media. Besides, we analyzed the OER activities of the (003) basal plane and the (012) and (110) edge planes of NiFe LDHs by density functional theory with on-site Coulomb interactions (DFT+U), and the calculation results indicated that the (012) edge plane exhibits the best catalytic performance among the various crystal planes because of the oxygen coordination of the Fe site, which is responsible for the high catalytic activity of NiFe NSAs-MPs.