Phosphorus-doped cobalt-iron oxyhydroxide with untrafine nanosheet structure enable efficient oxygen evolution electrocatalysis

Hui Xu; Jingjing Wei; Chaofan Liu; Yangping Zhang; Lin Tian; Caiqin Wang; Yukou Du

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.06.073

Phosphorus-doped cobalt-iron oxyhydroxide with untrafine nanosheet structure enable efficient oxygen evolution electrocatalysis

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Nov 15:530:146-153. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.06.073. Epub 2018 Jun 25.

Authors

Hui Xu¹, Jingjing Wei¹, Chaofan Liu¹, Yangping Zhang¹, Lin Tian², Caiqin Wang³, Yukou Du⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, PR China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xuzhou University of Technology, Xuzhou 221111, PR China.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S3H4, Canada.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, PR China. Electronic address: duyk@suda.edu.cn.

PMID: 29966847
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.06.073

Abstract

Although explosive progresses have been achieved in the field of water splitting, the design and development of stable and inexpensive electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution remain a formidable challenge. Herein, the cost-efficient two dimensional (2D) phosphorus-doped CoFe oxyhydroxide nanosheets (denoted as CoFeP NSs) are successfully engineered and showing exceptional oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity and chemical stability in 1 M KOH solution. This unique 2D nanosheet structure facilitates the mass transfer and electron transport, resulting in the remarkable OER activity that delivers a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 at a low overpotential of 305 mV with an ultra-small Tafel slope 49.6 mV/dec. More significantly, the doped P also plays a vital role in modulating the surface active sites, leading to the substantial enhancement of electrocatalytic performances. Our study provides a facile one-pot method for the successful fabrication of 2D P-doped CoFe NSs which display superior electrocatalytic performance, shedding great promise for environment and energy-related fields.

Keywords: CoFeP oxyhydroxides; Oxygen evolution reaction; Phosphorus dopant; Two dimensional nanosheets.