Construction of iron-modulated VN/V3O4/Co5·47N nanoparticles with rich heterogeneous interfaces for efficient oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

With the increasing need of clean energy demand, the development of efficient and green electrocatalysts for water electrolysis plays an irreplaceable role in the realization of large-scale production of hydrogen. Herein, an original iron modulated heterogeneous VN/V3O4/Co5·47N nanoparticles (FVOCN) is successfully synthesized using hydrothermal technique and in situ pyrolysis protocol. Through a series of characterization, it is found that the addition of iron in VN/V3O4/Co5·47N (VOCN) can significantly regulate the electronic structure and make it have better electrochemical oxygen evolution activity in 1 M KOH solution as opposed to the VOCN. The catalyst is obtained at the sintering temperature of 600 °C has the best performance, which only requires a lower overpotential of 270 mV to attain the current density of 10 mA cm−2 and superior to commercial IrO2. The method of introducing iron into vanadium-based, cobalt-based nitrides and vanadium-based oxides can broaden the research content of new electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts and provide a reference idea for the development of energy industry.