Endohedral Fe3C decorated multi-walled CNTs as an efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution

Abstract

The design and fabrication of high-performance and low-cost electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are highly desirable towards the next-generation energy storage and conversion technologies. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the typical non-precious metal-based catalyst, have drawn significant attentions in electrochemical OER, whereas their low catalytic performance and cumbersome synthesis route seriously prohibit the scalable applications in OER. In this study, a facile and economical strategy (namely, the simple one-step pyrolysis of Fe(C5H5)2) was dedicatedly exploited for successfully producing CNTs encapsulated with Fe3C nanoparticles (NPs). It is found that encapsulated Fe3C NPs significantly enhance the alkaline OER activity and the stability of CNTs. Our experimental investigations indicate the active sites of this Fe3C@CNTs electrocatalyst for OER are the oxygen-containing functional groups bonding to the surface of CNTs. The interaction between Fe3C NPs and CNTs boosts the OER activity and the stability of CNTs. In sum, the simple and low-cost synthetic strategy of Fe3C@CNTs combined with its excellent catalytic performances prompts it promising for future practical OER.