Waste to wealth: Defect-rich Ni-incorporated spent LiFePO4 for efficient oxygen evolution reaction

The development of efficient strategies to recycle lithium-ion battery (LIB) electrode materials is an important yet challenging goal for the sustainable management waste. This work reports a facile and economically method convert spent cathode material, LiFePO4, into high-performance NiFe oxy/hydroxide catalyst oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, Ni-LiFePO4 synthesized via wetness impregnation further evolves defect-rich nanosheets during OER. introduction Ni promoter together with in situ strengthens electronic interactions among metal sites creates abundance defects. Experimentally, evolved delivers low overpotential 285 mV at 10 mA cm−2 small Tafel slope 45 dec−1, outperforming pristine LiFePO4 even superior benchmark RuO2. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that effectively activates Fe by optimizing free energy *OOH intermediate defects facilitates desorption step, synergistically enhancing OER performance LiFePO4. As green versatile method, this new opportunity scalable fabrication excellent electrocatalysts based on materials.