Water electrolysis for producing hydrogen is considered to be the most feasible means to develop new green energy. Compared with above, urea electrolysis can improve energy conversion efficiency by introducing urea, and can also be used for purification of waste-water rich in urea. In this paper, a bifunctional electrocatalyst with heterostructure, namely Fe7Se8@Fe2O3 nanosheets supported on nickel foam, were synthesized for the first time through typical hydrothermal and partial oxidation processes. Iron cation promotes electron transfer and adjusts electron structure under the synergistic action of selenium and oxygen anion, thus achieving excellent catalytic activity of urea electrolysis. In an alkaline solution of 1 M KOH with 0.5 M urea, the Fe7Se8@Fe2O3/NF catalyst can drive the current density of 10 mA cm(-2) with requiring only potential of 1.313 V and overpotential of 141 mV for urea oxidation reaction (UOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), respectively. What is noteworthy is that Fe7Se8@Fe2O3/NF heterostructure is used as bifunctional electrocatalyst to form urea electrolyzer device, which only needs potential of 1.55 V to drive current density of 10 mA cm(-2), which is one of the best catalytic activities reported so far, and the electrode couple showed remarkable stability for 15 h. Density functional theory shows that the Fe7Se8@Fe2O3/NF material exhibits the minimum Gibbs free energy for the adsorption of hydrogen. This work provides a new method for exploring novel and environmentally friendly bifunctional electrocatalysts for urea electrolysis. (c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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