Design and Mechanistic Study of Highly Durable Carbon-Coated Cobalt Diphosphide Core–Shell Nanostructure Electrocatalysts for the Efficient and Stable Oxygen Evolution Reaction

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 11; no. 23; pp. 20752 - 20761
• Main Authors: Alsabban, Merfat M, Yang, Xiulin, Wahyudi, Wandi, Fu, Jui-Han, Hedhili, Mohamed. N, Ming, Jun, Yang, Chih-Wen, Nadeem, Muhammad A, Idriss, Hicham, Lai, Zhiping, Li, Lain-Jong, Tung, Vincent, Huang, Kuo-Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 12.06.2019
• Subjects: carbonization; catalysts; cobalt; durability; electrochemistry; gases; nanosheets; oxygen production; cobalt diphosphide; electrochemical catalyst; oxygen evolution reaction (OER); phosphidation; carbon coating
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b01847

The facile synthesis of hierarchically functional, catalytically active, and electrochemically stable nanostructures holds a tremendous promise for catalyzing the efficient and durable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and yet remains a formidable challenge. Herein, we report the scalable production of core–shell nanostructures composed of carbon-coated cobalt diphosphide nanosheets, C@CoP2, via three simple steps: (i) electrochemical deposition of Co species, (ii) gas-phase phosphidation, and (iii) carbonization of CoP2 for catalytic durability enhancement. Electrochemical characterizations showed that C@CoP2 delivers an overpotential of 234 mV, retains its initial activity for over 80 h of continuous operation, and exhibits a fast OER rate of 63.8 mV dec–1 in base.