Premium
Oxygen Vacancy Engineering of Co 3 O 4 Nanocrystals through Coupling with Metal Support for Water Oxidation
Author(s) -
Zhang JunJun,
Wang HongHui,
Zhao TianJian,
Zhang KeXin,
Wei Xiao,
Jiang ZhiDong,
Hirano ShinIchi,
Li XinHao,
Chen JieSheng
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chemsuschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.412
H-Index - 157
eISSN - 1864-564X
pISSN - 1864-5631
DOI - 10.1002/cssc.201700779
Subject(s) - overpotential , tafel equation , oxygen evolution , nanomaterial based catalyst , oxygen , nanocrystal , transition metal , materials science , metal , noble metal , vacancy defect , water splitting , chemistry , inorganic chemistry , chemical engineering , nanotechnology , electrode , catalysis , crystallography , metallurgy , electrochemistry , photocatalysis , biochemistry , organic chemistry , engineering
Oxygen vacancies can help to capture oxygen‐containing species and act as active centers for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Unfortunately, effective methods for generating a high amount of oxygen vacancies on the surface of various nanocatalysts are rather limited. Here, we described an effective way to generate oxygen‐vacancy‐rich surface of transition metal oxides, exemplified with Co 3 O 4 , simply by constructing highly coupled interface of ultrafine Co 3 O 4 nanocrystals and metallic Ti. Impressively, the amounts of oxygen vacancy on the surface of Co 3 O 4 /Ti surpassed the reported values of the Co 3 O 4 modified even under highly critical conditions. The Co 3 O 4 /Ti electrode could provide a current density of 23 mA cm −2 at an OER overpotential of 570 mV, low Tafel slope, and excellent durability in neutral medium. Because of the formation of a large amount of oxygen vacancies as the active centers for OER on the surface, the TOF value of the Co 3 O 4 @Ti electrode was optimized to be 3238 h −1 at an OER overpotential of 570 mV, which is 380 times that of the state‐of‐the‐art non‐noble nanocatalysts in the literature.