Rational design of transition metal FeCo-supported CdSe hybrid (FeCo–CdSe) nanosheet electrocatalyst for alkaline OER and HER

Considering sustainable OER and HER activity, developing highly productive and earth-abundant bifunctional electrocatalysts is emerging as a massive challenge for revolutionizing the hydrogen economy. As effective new star electrocatalyst single-phase transition metals, chalcogenides are significantly exploring the critical bottlenecks of OER and HER reactions. The wrapped sheet-like structure of FeCo–CdSe with optimized electronic structure retained a large electrochemically active surface area of 2248 cm²/g, low charge transport resistance, higher conductivity, and more exposed active sites for boosted electrochemical reaction. The prepared FeCo–CdSe catalyst in the cell requires a very low overpotential of 181/167 mV to initiate OER/HER reaction at 10 mA/cm² exchange current density and small Tafel slope 82.3/73.3 mV/dec with long-duration stability of 40/37 h OER/HER at constant current density without structural and morphological variations. This work proposed a design to develop single-phase metals and chalcogenides-based no-precious electrocatalysts with benchmark water-splitting efficiency for sustainable industrial hydrogen revolutions.