Defective NiFe2O4 Nanoparticles for Efficient Urea Electrooxidation

Fengchi Wu,[a, b] Gang Ou,[a, b] Ye Wang,[c] Haizhe Zhong,[a, b] Lifu Zhang,[a] Henan Li,*[d, e] and
Yumeng Shi*[a, b

DOI: 10.1002/asia.201900752

Abstract: Urea is an important organic pollutants in sewage and needs to be removed for environmental protection. Here, we report defective NiFe2O4 (NFO) nanoparticles with excellent performance for urea electro-oxidation. The results show that defects can be effectively im planted at the surface of NFO nanoparticles by a facile and versatile lithium reduction method without affecting its main crystal structure and grain size. The defective NFO-5Li nanoparticles displayed a significantly improved urea electro-oxidation performance compared with NFO Pristine nanoparticles. Particularly, the NFO-Pristine and NFO-5Li show a potential of 1.398 and 1.361 V at the cur rent density of 10 mA cm2 and Tafel slope of 37.3 and 31.4 mVdec1, respectively. In addition, the NFO-5Li nano particles also revealed outstanding electrocatalytic stability. The superior performance can be attributed to the de signed tunable surface defect engineering. Furthermore, the defect engineering strategy as well as the defective NFO nanoparticles hold great potential for applications in other materials and areas.