Nickel-based nitrodopamine MOF and its derived composites functionalized with multi-walled carbon nanotubes for efficient OER applications

In recent era, development of an un-expensive, highly effective, green and robust electrocatalyst for the production of hydrogen via water splitting is a major consequence to deal with energy crisis. In the present work, a novel Ni based MOF and its nanocomposite functionalized with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) is synthesized via solvothermal method. To increase the catalytic activity of the synthesized material, heat treatment of the fabricated MOF is carried out at 673 K for 3 h. For structural, textural and morphological studies different analytical techniques are applied with subsequent utilization of synthesized materials for catalyzing slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Amongst all Ni-nitrodopamine (NDA/MWCNTs-a) electrocatalyst displays outstanding catalytic activity at low overpotential of 285 mV, small Tafel slope of 73 mV dec^-1, and long-term stability of 24 h surpassing the catalytic proficiency for noble metal oxides such as IrO₂ and RuO₂.