Abstract
Hydrogen is not only a promising energy, but also widely used in
inflammation treatment and sports training. The key to these
applications is to obtain purity hydrogen conveniently. Water
electrolysis provides a green and sustainable method for hydrogen
production, but the urgent problem is to develop low-cost and efficient
electrocatalysts. In this work, hierarchically porous
Ni3S2 nanostructures, which the
flocculent two-dimensional Ni3S2 is
coated on the surface of Ni3S2
nanosheets, were successfully grown on nickel foam through a facile
two-step hydrothermal reaction. The hierarchically porous
Ni3S2 nanostructures has a large
specific surface area can expose more active sites and facilitates
desorption of bubbles. Moreover, the theoretical calculation indicated
that the dimensional confinement effect of metallic
Ni3S2 improves the carrier concentration
and conductivity. Therefore, the hierarchically porous
Ni3S2 nanostructures on nickel foam
exhibited enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction and good catalytic
stability. This work sheds some light on improving the catalytic
performance of metallic compounds.