Abstract
It is a challenging task to seek a highly-efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting. Non-noble Co-based nanomaterials are considered as earth-abundant and effective catalysts to lower overpotential and increase polarization current density of OER. In this work, we reported, for the first time, a “rapid solvent-evaporation” strategy for the synthesis of three-dimensional (3D) cobalt complex hierarchical architectures constructed by two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets. The 3D structured cobalt complexes have excellent performances in catalyzing OER with lower onset potential, overpotential, Tafel slope and better stability than commercial IrO2. Superior electrochemical performances would be beneficial from the unique 3D structure. This extremely simple method for 3D Co complex with good OER activities makes the complex be promising commercial OER catalyst to replace earth-rare and expensive IrO2.
Highlights
It is a challenging task to seek a highly-efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting
Since the solvent evaporation process is very quick and there is no enough time for slow crystallization in solution, no obvious diffraction peaks can be detected in the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns (Fig. 2a), suggesting the amorphous nature of the obtained Co product
It is obviously observed that both Co complex (CC)-B and CC-G have similar curves to urea, suggesting the remaining existence of urea molecules in the product, which would serve as ligands to coordinate with Co2+
Summary
It is a challenging task to seek a highly-efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting. This facile RSE method evaporates solvent quickly during reaction process under high-temperature, resulting in the formation of novel 3D cobalt complex hierarchical architectures, which are completely different from those obtained at slow evaporation processes.
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