Porous and wrinkle treatment of commercial Ni foam and its application for high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction electrode

Exploring high-efficiency electrode for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critically important toward the water splitting. In this article, we put forward a novel and facile approach, oxidation and subsequent reduction, for in situ porous and wrinkled treatment of commercial nickel foam to construct a micron rough nickel foam (MRNF). The fabricated MRNF is developed as a current collector to construct an OER composite electrode by depositing nanostructured Co(OH)₂ on its surface via constant voltage deposition method. The results indicate that the porous and wrinkled treatment could obviously increases the contact sites between current collector (MRNF) and active material (Co(OH)₂), leading to a remarkably reduction in charge transfer resistance. The designed MRNF/Co(OH)₂ electrode presents enhanced OER electrocatalysis activity with a low overpotential of 274.4 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm⁻² within alkaline solution. Furthermore, the hierarchical porous and wrinkle structures of the MRNF also significantly improve the mechanical integrity of the electrode, resulting in superior stability.