Morphology‐Dependent Reconstruction Generates One‐Dimensional Catalysts for Durable Urea‐Assisted Water Electrolysis at Industrial Current Density
Ying Xie, Qingdian Yan, Xinyu Chen, Jianbin Luo, Wenbin Jiang, Deqi Fan, Yu Zhang, Xue Wang, Ming ZhaoABSTRACT
Designing cost‐effective and durable catalysts for the urea oxidation reaction (UOR) at industrial current density is key to materializing UOR‐assisted water electrolysis for green hydrogen production while remedying environmental urea pollution. Here, we discovered the morphology‐dependent in situ reconstruction to transform copper‐based two‐dimensional nanosheets and zero‐dimensional cubes into one‐dimensional copper hydroxide (Cu(OH) 2 ) nanowires and nanoneedles, respectively, for enhanced UOR. Both a properly applied potential and the presence of urea were proven pivotal in directing the structural transformation. In situ spectroscopic analyses and density functional theory calculations confirm the key role of absorbed N‒O species in promoting the structural reconstruction and unveil the two reaction paths for UOR. Excitingly, the in situ reconstruction‐generated Cu(OH) 2 nanowires show an overpotential as low as 1.38 V at 100 mA cm ‒2 toward UOR. When employed as the anode catalyst for UOR‐assisted anion exchange membrane water electrolysis, the Cu(OH) 2 nanowires achieve an industrial‐level current density of 1 A cm ‒2 at a cell voltage of only 1.67 V, together with a stable operation for 260 h, remarkably outperforming almost all reported catalysts in recent studies, and show great promise for industrial applications. This work highlights in situ reconstruction for generating efficient nanowire catalysts for UOR‐assisted water electrolysis, opening avenues for catalyst design toward sustainability applications.