LAUSR

H2 production via electrocatalytic water splitting was greatly hindered by the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Urea oxidation reaction (UOR) has drawn specific attention not only due to its lower theoretical voltage of 0.37 V compared with OER (1.23 V), but also for treating sewage water. Herein, we constructed Ni/NiO nanosheets with an ultrathin N-doped C layer containing Schottky Ni and NiO heterointerface. Because of the self-driven charge redistribution at the heterointerface, janus charge domains were successfully created to drive the cleavage of urea molecules. Meanwhile, the synergistic effect between N-doped C and Ni/NiO restrained the deactivation of active sites in alkaline solution. Our catalyst displayed 1.35 V for UOR at 10 mA/cm2, 0.27 V lower than that of OER. The final potential increase was only 2 mV after long-term stability test of 12 h for UOR, much smaller than the uncoated sample (38 mV). The present work proved that carbon coated transition metal nanomaterials with oxygen-vacancies and Schottky heterointerface were promising candidates for simultaneously boosting UOR with both high activity and long-term stability.