Bifunctional Self-Supported Ir-Doped NiFe Electrocatalysts for Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis

We report a self-supported amorphous NiFeIr electrocatalyst grown directly on Ni foam that achieves exceptional bifunctional activity for alkaline water electrolysis. Benefiting from Ir-induced electron redistribution, abundant oxygen defects, and enhanced electrochemical surface area, the optimized NiFeIr catalyst delivers an ultralow overpotential of 4 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction and 213 mV for oxygen evolution reaction at 10 mA cm–2 in alkaline conditions, surpassing commercial Pt/C and IrO2 benchmarks. Integrated into an anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer (AEMWE), NiFeIr reaches 0.8 A cm–2 at just 1.9 V, exhibiting excellent stability over 100 h at 500 mA cm–2. These findings present a scalable strategy to advance cost-effective high-performance bifunctional catalysts for industrial-scale clean hydrogen production via AEMWE.