Interface Engineering of Heterogeneous CeO₂–CoO Nanofibers with Rich Oxygen Vacancies for Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Performance
2021
Li, Weimo | Zhao, Lusi | Wang, Ce | Lu, Xiaofeng | Chen, Wei
The development of highly efficient and cheap electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is highly desirable in typical water-splitting electrolyzers to achieve renewable energy production, yet it still remains a huge challenge. Herein, we have presented a simple procedure to construct a new nanofibrous hybrid structure with the interface connecting the surface of CeO₂ and CoO as a high-performance electrocatalyst toward the OER through an electrospinning–calcination–reduction process. The resultant CeO₂–CoO nanofibers exhibit excellent electrocatalytic properties with a small overpotential of 296 mV at 10 mA cm–² for the OER, which is superior to many previously reported nonprecious metal-based and commercial RuO₂ catalysts. Furthermore, the prepared CeO₂–CoO nanofibers display remarkable long-term stability, which can be maintained for 130 h with nearly no attenuation of OER activity in an alkaline electrolyte. A combined experimental and theoretical investigation reveals that the excellent OER properties of CeO₂-CoO nanofibers are due to the unique interfacial architecture between CeO₂ and CoO, where abundant oxygen vacancies can be generated due to the incomplete matching of atomic positions of two parts, leading to the formation of many low-coordinated Co sites with high OER catalytic activity. This research provides a practical and promising opportunity for the application of heterostructured nonprecious metal oxide catalysts for high-efficiency electrochemical water oxidation.
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