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Confinement synergy at the heterointerface for enhanced oxygen evolution

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Abstract

Two-dimensional transition metal hydroxides with abundant reserves and low prices have played an indispensable role in energy catalytic applications. Recent reports indicated that the incorporation of Fe species into Co-based catalysts can synergistically enhance oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity. Constructing a heterointerface on the surface of Co-based catalysts can provide a platform to investigate the role of heterointerface in reaction kinetics. Herein, we constructed a Fe-O-Co heterointerface without electronic effect by depositing FeOx clusters on the oxygen vacancies of CoOOH surface. FeOx/CoOOH exhibited excellent OER intrinsic activity, which can deliver the turnover frequency (TOF) of 4.56 s−1 at the overpotentials of 300 mV and the Tafel slope of 33 mV×dec−1. In-situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrated that the synergistic effect between Fe sites and Co sites confined at the Fe-O-Co heterointerface accelerated the charge transfer during OER and optimized the adsorption of oxygen intermediates, consequently enhancing OER.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2017YFA0403402, 2019YFA0405600, 2019YFA0405602, and 2021YFA1500500), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Nos. 21972132, 21673214, 22202192, U19A2015, 92045301, U1732149, and U1732272), National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 21925204), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720220010), Provincial Key Research and Development Program of Anhui (No. 202004a05020074), K. C. Wong Education (No. GJTD-2020-15), the DNL Cooperation Fund, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, No. DNL202003), Users with Excellence Program of Hefei Science Center CAS (No. 2020HSC-UE001), USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative (No. YD2340002002), Anhui Natural Science Foundation for Young Scholars (Nos. 2208085QB52 and 2208085QB41), and CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (No. YSBR-051).

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  1. Dongdi Wang and Shanshan Ruan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (iChEM), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Dongdi Wang, Shanshan Ruan, Peiyu Ma, Ruyang Wang, Xilan Ding, Lidong Zhang & Jun Bao

  2. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Key Laboratory of Surface and Interface Chemistry and Energy Catalysis of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Ming Zuo, Zhirong Zhang & Jie Zeng

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  1. Dongdi Wang
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  2. Shanshan Ruan
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Correspondence to Zhirong Zhang, Jie Zeng or Jun Bao.

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Wang, D., Ruan, S., Ma, P. et al. Confinement synergy at the heterointerface for enhanced oxygen evolution. Nano Res. 16, 8793–8799 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5514-4

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