Abstract
It is still challengeable to develop oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst with low cost and high efficiency to accelerate the kinetic of water splitting. Herein, a facile solvothermal method is put forward to synthesize three-dimensional porous cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid network constructed by a network of carbon nanorods in which cobalt ferrite nanoparticles are uniformly embedded. The cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid electrocatalyst delivers outstanding OER performance, especially a very low onset potential (1.49 V vs. RHE), a very low Tafel slope (38 mV dec−1), and to obtain a current density of 10 mA cm−2 only requires a very small potential (1.56 V), which is much better than cobalt ferrite, and comparable to RuO2. Furthermore, it also displays excellent long-term stability under 25 h of chronoamperometric testing. The reason why cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid has such superior OER performance stems from the low oxygen coordination and solid-state redox couples of cobalt ferrite, the conductive carbon nanorod skeleton and the unique three-dimensional porous nanoarchitecture, which can not only sustain the high conductivity and structural stability of the hybrid catalyst, but also facilitate the electron/ion transfer and oxygen bubble diffusion and bare more electrochemically active surface sites. This paper proposes a new scheme for the synthesis of non-noble transition metal oxide-based OER electrocatalysts with rationally designed nanoarchitecture and high efficiency.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2015AA034202), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21773024, 51372033).
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Yue, H., Zhang, W., Yu, B. et al. Three-dimensional porous cobalt ferrite and carbon nanorod hybrid network as highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction. J Mater Sci 55, 11489–11500 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04718-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04718-z