Preparation of Ni-Co spinel oxide by alloy oxidation method

Ni-Co spinel oxide (NiCo2O4) is an important electrocatalyst in many electrochemical processes such as hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution and organic electrosynthesis [I]. At present, the methods of preparation Ni-Co spinel oxide include nitrate decomposition, coprecipitation decomposition, sol-gel method [2-4] and so on. One of the major shortcomings of these methods is the poor adhesion between the oxide and the metal support (usually nickel). Many efforts have made to improve the adhesion. Ref. [5] studied the Teflon-bond NiCo2O4, but the poor conductance of Teflon also decreases the electrocatalytic activities of the spinel. Little study has tried the direct oxidation of Ni-Co alloy to obtain the spinel oxide. In this paper, we tried to synthesis Ni-Co spinel oxide by the method of Ni-Co alloy oxidation.