In situ formation of surface-induced oxygen vacancies in Co9S8/CoO/NC as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for improved oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions

Khalil Ur Rehman, Shaista Airam, Xiangyun Lin, Jian Gao, Qiang Guo, Zhipan Zhang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Creating oxygen vacancies and introducing heterostructures are two widely used strategies in Co-based oxides for their efficient electrocatalytic performance, yet both strategies have rarely been used together to design a bifunctional electrocatalyst for an efficient overall water splitting. Herein, we propose a facile strategy to synthesize oxygen-defect-rich Co9S8/CoO hetero-nanoparticles with a nitrogen-doped carbon shell (ODR-Co9S8/CoO/NC) through the in situ conversion of heterojunction along with surface-induced oxygen vacancies, simply via annealing the precursor Co3S4/Co(OH)2/ZIF-67. The as-prepared ODR-Co9S8/CoO/NC shows excellent bifunctional catalytic activities, featuring a low overpotential of 217 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and 160 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This performance excellency is attributed to unique heterostructure and oxygen defects in Co9S8/CoO nanoparticles, the current work is expected to offer new insights to the design of cost-effective, noble-metal-free electrocatalysts.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2237
JournalNanomaterials
Volume11
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2021

Keywords

  • Heterojunction
  • Hydrogen evolution reaction
  • Oxygen evolution reaction
  • Oxygen vacancies

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