Abstract
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•Effectual electrocatalytic Ni/rGO has been primed by an in-situ reduction method.•Ni/rGO drives kinetically slothful OER at much lower onset potential of 1.42 VRHE.•Ni/rGO shows imperious kinetics with smaller Tafel slope (62 mVdec−1).•Ni/rGO electrocatalyst depicts exceptional performance for overall water splitting.
Herein, we reported a facile route to fabricate the Ni-NPs decorated over reduced graphene oxide (Ni/rGO) nanocomposite by an in-situ reduction method. It has been observed that the Ni/rGO drived the water oxidation at a very low overpotential of 1.42 VRHE (ŋ = 190 mV). Furthermore, the robust catalyst presented an extraordinary porosity and imperious kinetics performance while showing a high time of flight (0.2 s−1), mass activity (28 A/g) and smaller value of Tafel slope (62 mVdec−1) at an applied potential of 0.35 VRHE only. Ni/rGO also exhibited stable current density which leftovers sustained in alkaline water catalysis conducted for a prolonged time without any significant loss in catalytic efficiency. This outstanding catalytic activity of hierarchical Ni/rGO is comparable to avant-garde electrocatalytic material and even much better than the noble and transitional metal-centred eensy-weensy electrocatalytic assemblies with several drawbacks.