As the global energy crisis and environmental pollution problem continues, there is an increasing demand for clean and sustainable energy storage and conversion technologies, such as water-splitting electrolysis. Water electrolysis is a process of running an electrical current through water in separating the hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a key reaction in this electrochemical process, and the electrochemical performance of these systems is usually hindered by the slow

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... ER reaction kinetics. In order to achieve high energy conversion efficiency, the development of efficient OER catalysts is the key. To achieve that, abundant research is done by using noble metal oxides as catalyst, such as IrO2 and RuO2. However, considering their high cost, a cheap earth-abundant material with a high OER catalytic activity is required. Accordingly, this study has been focused on the synthesis of three dimensional porous structured Ni-based OER catalysts. First, a 3D porous Ni meso-foam was developed through a facile high-temperature one-pot synthesis method, and its catalytic activity towards OER was explored. Specifically, the as-synthesized Ni meso-foam material, referred to as raw NMF, has a wire-linked structure and high surface area. A reduction procedure was introduced to obtain reduced Ni meso-foam materials, referred to as NMF-H2. It was also oxidized in air at 600 ℃ to form a semi-hollow NiO crosslinking phase and subsequently reduced in H2 at 300℃, forming a regenerated porous Ni foam material, referred to as NMF-O2/H2. The composition and morphology of all materials were investigated by XRD and SEM, respectively. The SEM image reveals that, in the porous NMF-O2/H2, the cross-linked meso-wire structure was maintained, and the average pore size is between 0.5-5 μm. Electrochemical analysis show that the OER activity of the Ni foam catalysts follows NMF-O2/H2 > NMF-H2 > raw NMF. In addition to the NMF-based materials, a Ni/Ni(OH)2 layer-structured electrocatalyst, referred to as NiDHBT, was [...]