For electrocatalytic water splitting, the sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) restricts the cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Therefore, developing an alternative anodic reaction with accelerating kinetics to produce value-added chemicals, especially coupled with HER, is of great importance. Now, a thermodynamically more favorable primary amine (-CH2 -NH2 ) electrooxidation catalyzed by NiSe nanorod arrays in water is reported to replace OER for enhancing HER. The increased H2 production can be obtained at cathode; meanwhile, a variety of aromatic and aliphatic primary amines are selectively electrooxidized to nitriles with good yields at the anode. Mechanistic investigations suggest that NiII /NiIII may serve as the redox active species for the primary amines transformation. Hydrophobic nitrile products can readily escape from aqueous electrolyte/electrode interface, avoiding the deactivation of the catalyst and thus contributing to continuous gram-scale synthesis.
Keywords: electrocatalysis; energy efficiency; hydrogen evolution reaction; nanostructures; primary amine oxidation.
© 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.