Hierarchical Hollow CoWO4–Co(OH)2 Heterostructured Nanoboxes Enabling Efficient Water Oxidation Electrocatalysis

• Published in: Inorganic chemistry Vol. 61; no. 35; pp. 14224 - 14232
• Main Authors: Xu, Hui, Wang, Cheng, He, Guangyu, Chen, Haiqun, Du, Yukou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 05.09.2022
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c02666
• ISSN: 0020-1669; 1520-510X

Rational design and construction of well-defined hollow heterostructured nanomaterials assembled by ultrathin nanosheets overtakes crucial role in developing high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts. Herein, a reliable metal–organic framework-mediated and cation-exchange strategy to tune the geometric structure and multicomponent heterostructures has been proposed for the fabrication of hollow CoWO4–Co­(OH)2 hierarchical nanoboxes assembled by rich ultrathin nanosheets. Benefiting from the hierarchical hollow nanostructure, the CoWO4–Co­(OH)2 nanoboxes offer plenty of metal active centers available for reaction intermediates. Moreover, the well-defined nanointerfaces between CoWO4 and Co­(OH)2 can function as the bridge for boosting the efficient electron transfer from CoWO4 to Co­(OH)2. As a consequence, the optimized CoWO4–Co­(OH)2 nanoboxes can exhibit outstanding electrocatalytic performance toward OER by delivering 10 mA cm–2 with a low overpotential of 280 mV and a small Tafel slope of 70.6 mV dec–1 as well as outstanding electrochemical stability. More importantly, this CoWO4–Co­(OH)2 heterostructured nanocatalyst can couple with Pt/C to drive overall water splitting to achieve 10 mA cm–2 with a voltage of 1.57 V.