Ammonia-assisted Ni particle preferential deposition in Ni-Fe pyrophosphates on iron foam to improve the catalytic performance for overall water splitting.

Designing efficient and cost-effective electrocatalysts for overall water splitting remains a major challenge in hydrogen production. Herein, ammonia was introduced to pyrophosphate chelating solution assisted Ni particles preferential plating on porous Fe substrate to form coral-like Ni/NiFe-Pyro electrode. The pyrophosphate with multiple complex sites can couple with nickel and iron ions to form an integrated network structure, which also consists of metallic nickel due to the introduction of ammonia. The large network structure in Ni/NiFe-Pyro significantly enhances the synergistic effect between nickel and iron and then improves the electrocatalytic performance. As a result, the coral-like Ni/NiFe-Pyro@IF exhibits good electrocatalytic activity and stability for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The electrolyzer assembled with Ni/NiFe-Pyro@IF as cathode and anode just needs a low water-splitting voltage of 1.54 V to obtain the current density of 10 mA cm-2. Meanwhile, the stability test of Ni/NiFe-Pyro@IF is performed at the current densities ranging from 10 to 400 mA cm-2 for 50 h without any significant decay, indicating robust catalytic stability for overall water splitting. This strategy for synthesizing metal/metal pyrophosphate composites may provide a new avenue for future studies of efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts.

Enhanced Efficiency and Stability of Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells via Primary Amine Molecular Reaction.

The inverted perovskite solar cells have drawn considerable attention owing to their low cost, good compatibility, and easy production processes. However, the device performance is still limited by some important factors, such as surface imperfections and interfacial nonradiative recombination losses. Here, N-acetylethylenediamine (N-AE) is introduced to bind to the surface of the perovskite film via an ammonia condensation reaction. This process creates a stable interfacial layer with n-type doping to enhance the open-circuit voltage (VOC). Moreover, during post-treatment, N-AE dissolves a portion of the perovskite on the surface, leading to perovskite recrystallization. This process enhances the surface quality of the perovskite film and reduces nonradiative recombination. As a result, the inverted perovskite solar cell exhibits a power conversion efficiency approaching 20%, with a rise in VOC from 0.96 to 1.05 V. More impressively, the unencapsulated devices display excellent stability at 85 °C annealing and retained 88% of the initial PCE for 816 h.