Issue 14, 2020

CoS2@N-doped carbon core–shell nanorod array grown on Ni foam for enhanced electrocatalytic water oxidation

Abstract

Developing a highly efficient and low-cost oxygen-evolution-reaction (OER) electrocatalyst is an important route to overcome the rate-determining step of water splitting. Here, we directly grew a CoS2 nanoarray core with an N-doped graphitic carbon (NGC) shell on Ni foam (NF) to construct a core–shell nanorod array electrode, CoS2@NGC@NF. The CoS2 core with a high work function (∼5.5 eV) tends to capture electrons from the NGC layer (4.5–5.2 eV) to induce an electron-poor NGC shell with a significant downshift of the carbon Fermi level, facilitating the adsorption of O-containing intermediates and affording decreased activation energy during the OER process. As a result, the three-dimensional NGC encapsulated CoS2 array assembly exhibited excellent electrocatalytic OER activity with a low overpotential of 243 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a small Tafel slope of 71 mV dec−1 in 1.0 M KOH. Our findings may suggest that manipulating the interface energetics by the work function difference is a potential route to the design of high-performance OER electrocatalysts.

Graphical abstract: CoS2@N-doped carbon core–shell nanorod array grown on Ni foam for enhanced electrocatalytic water oxidation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 Jan 2020
Accepted
08 Mar 2020
First published
10 Mar 2020

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 6795-6803

CoS2@N-doped carbon core–shell nanorod array grown on Ni foam for enhanced electrocatalytic water oxidation

L. Pei, J. Zhong, T. Li, W. Bai, S. Wu, Y. Yuan, Y. Chen, Z. Yu, S. Yan and Z. Zou, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020, 8, 6795 DOI: 10.1039/D0TA00777C

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