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Selectively Etching Vanadium Oxide to Modulate Surface Vacancies of Unary Metal–Based Electrocatalysts for High‐Performance Water Oxidation
Author(s) -
Fan Ke,
Zou Haiyuan,
Duan Lele,
Sun Licheng
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
advanced energy materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.08
H-Index - 220
eISSN - 1614-6840
pISSN - 1614-6832
DOI - 10.1002/aenm.201903571
Subject(s) - overpotential , electrocatalyst , materials science , oxygen evolution , water splitting , oxide , chemical engineering , inorganic chemistry , catalysis , reversible hydrogen electrode , metal , vanadium , electrode , electrochemistry , chemistry , metallurgy , photocatalysis , working electrode , engineering , biochemistry
Electrocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen generation is hindered by the sluggish kinetics of water oxidation, and highly efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are urgently required. Numerous bi‐ and multimetal‐based, low‐cost, high‐performance OER electrocatalysts have been developed. However, unary metal–based high‐performance electrocatalysts are seldom reported. In the present study, Co 2 (OH) 3 Cl/vanadium oxide (VO y ) composites are synthesized, from which VO y is completely etched out by a simple cyclic voltammetry treatment, which simultaneously transforms Co 2 (OH) 3 Cl in situ to ultrafine CoOOH. The selective removal of VO y modulates the nature of the surface in the obtained CoOOH by creating surface oxygen vacancies ( V o ), along with disordered grain boundaries. The best‐performing CoOOH with optimum V o is found to be associated with a low overpotential of 282 mV at 10 mA cm −2 catalytic current density on a simple glassy carbon electrode for OER. This facile protocol of selectively etching VO y to modulate the nature of the surface is successfully applied to synthesize another Fe‐based electrocatalyst with high OER performance, thus establishing its utility for unary metal–based electrocatalyst synthesis.