MOF-directed templating synthesis of hollow nickel-cobalt sulfide with enhanced electrocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution

Abstract

The development of efficient, universal and cheap electrocatalysts for the utilization in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) by desired morphology and composition remains a great challenge. Herein, we report a facile and novel method to prepare the porous hollow nickel-cobalt sulfide (NiCoS) by using zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) as the template. The obtained NiCoS-3 polyhedron shows superior catalytic activity toward OER with a low overpotential of 320 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm−2, a small Tafel slope of 58.8 mV dec−1 and excellent stability. Benefiting from their structural and compositional merits, the as-synthesized NiCoS-3 polyhedron may be a good promising candidate electrocatalysts for water splitting. Present work provides a simple strategy to regulated composition, morphology and catalytic activity relationship, offer an effective way to design a low-cost and efficient electrocatalyst.