Engineering cobalt sulfide/oxide heterostructure with atomically mixed interfaces for synergistic electrocatalytic water splitting
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Yida Deng1(
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It remains challenging to develop economical and bifunctional electrocatalysts toward oxygen/hydrogen evolution reactions (OER/HER). Herein, we construct Co9S8 nanoflakes decorated Co3O4 nanoarrays with enriched heterogeneous interface zones on Ni foam (Co9S8@Co3O4/NF) via a novel step-wise approach. The Co9S8@Co3O4/NF hybrid manifests excellent performance with low overpotentials of 130 mV for HER (10 mA·cm–2) and 331 mV for OER (100 mA·cm–2), delivering a small voltage of 1.52 V for water splitting at 10 mA·cm–2 as well as outstanding catalytic durability, which surpasses precious metals and previously reported earth-abundant nanocatalysts. Further experimental and theoretical investigations demonstrate that the excellent performance is attributed to the followings: (ⅰ) Highly conductive Ni facilitates the efficient charge transfer; (ⅱ) porous core-shell nanoarchitecture benefits the infiltration and transportation of gases/ions; (ⅲ) heterogeneous interface zones synergistically lower the chemisorption energy of hydrogen/oxygen intermediates. This work will shed light on the controllable synthesis and engineering of heterostructure nanomaterials for clean energy storage and conversion technologies.
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Engineering cobalt sulfide/oxide heterostructure with atomically mixed interfaces for synergistic electrocatalytic water splitting
), Yida Deng1(
),
Abstract
It remains challenging to develop economical and bifunctional electrocatalysts toward oxygen/hydrogen evolution reactions (OER/HER). Herein, we construct Co9S8 nanoflakes decorated Co3O4 nanoarrays with enriched heterogeneous interface zones on Ni foam (Co9S8@Co3O4/NF) via a novel step-wise approach. The Co9S8@Co3O4/NF hybrid manifests excellent performance with low overpotentials of 130 mV for HER (10 mA·cm–2) and 331 mV for OER (100 mA·cm–2), delivering a small voltage of 1.52 V for water splitting at 10 mA·cm–2 as well as outstanding catalytic durability, which surpasses precious metals and previously reported earth-abundant nanocatalysts. Further experimental and theoretical investigations demonstrate that the excellent performance is attributed to the followings: (ⅰ) Highly conductive Ni facilitates the efficient charge transfer; (ⅱ) porous core-shell nanoarchitecture benefits the infiltration and transportation of gases/ions; (ⅲ) heterogeneous interface zones synergistically lower the chemisorption energy of hydrogen/oxygen intermediates. This work will shed light on the controllable synthesis and engineering of heterostructure nanomaterials for clean energy storage and conversion technologies.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51972224).
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