Urea-assisted water electrolysis is regarded as an energy-efficient strategy for hydrogen production, but its potential use is still limited by sluggish kinetics in both anodic urea oxidation reaction (UOR) and cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we report the facile synthesis of nickel foam (NF) supported Ni/W₅N₄ Mott-Schottky heterojunction nano-microspheres as a highly active catalyst for both UOR and HER using a hydrothermal method followed by nitridation treatment. The as-prepared Ni/W₅N₄/NF catalyst with high electrochemically active surface area would reconstruct under oxidizing condition to form nickel tungsten oxyhydroxides to efficiently drive UOR, with a potential of only 1.34 V (versus reversible hydrogen electrode) at 10 mA cm⁻². Impressively, thus-prepared catalyst benefited from charge redistribution only required an overpotential of 25 mV at 10 mA cm⁻² for HER. In particular, the Ni/W₅N₄/NF catalyst couple used for urea-assisted water electrolysis just needed a cell voltage of 1.77 V at 1000 mA cm⁻².

尿素辅助水电解被认为是一种高效节能的制氢策略，但其潜在用途仍受到阳极尿素氧化反应 (UOR) 和阴极析氢反应 (HER) 动力学缓慢的限制。在此，我们报告了使用水热法和氮化处理轻松合成泡沫镍 (NF) 负载的 Ni/W ₅ N ₄莫特-肖特基异质结纳米微球作为 UOR 和 HER 的高活性催化剂。所制备的 Ni/W ₅ N ₄具有高电化学活性表面积的/NF 催化剂将在氧化条件下重构以形成羟基氧化镍以有效驱动 UOR，在 10 mA cm ^-2时的电势仅为 1.34 V（相对于可逆氢电极） 。令人印象深刻的是，由此制备的催化剂受益于电荷再分配，对于 HER ，在 10 mA cm ^{-2下仅需要 25 mV 的过电势。}特别是，用于尿素辅助水电解的 Ni/W ₅ N _{4 /NF 催化剂对在 1000 mA cm} ^-2下仅需要 1.77 V 的电池电压。