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Co(OH)2 hollow nanoflowers as highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction

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Abstract

Electrocatalytic water splitting for the production of H2 is increasingly becoming a significant method to mitigate the current energy crisis and environmental pollution. However, oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a slow four-electron progress, is the bottle neck of water splitting. Thus, developing new, low cost, and effective catalysts for OER is a research hotspot in material and energy resource fields. Therefore, the research of nonprecious, metal-based OER catalysts has been popular. In this work, it is validated that 3D hollow Co(OH)2 nanoflowers synthesized by a facile template-based strategy at room temperature are effective electrocatalysts for OER. The catalysts display high activity with a current density of 10 mA/cm2 at an overpotential of 310 mV and a small Tafel slope of 68.9 mV/dec in alkaline condition. It’s noteworthy that this material is stable for over 20 h of chronopotentiometry. This work offers a simple and promising way to prepare efficient and durable electrocatalysts.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21101170, 21503126, and 21573139), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK201603037), the Starting Research Funds of Shaanxi Normal University, and the “Thousand Talents Program” of China.

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  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, 710119, China

    Hongfei Liu, Dingyi Guo, Wei Zhang & Rui Cao

  2. Department of Chemistry, Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China

    Rui Cao

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  1. Hongfei Liu
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  2. Dingyi Guo
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  3. Wei Zhang
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  4. Rui Cao
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Correspondence to Wei Zhang or Rui Cao.

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Liu, H., Guo, D., Zhang, W. et al. Co(OH)2 hollow nanoflowers as highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction. Journal of Materials Research 33, 568–580 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.390

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.390

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