Co-Based Nanosheets with Transitional Metal Doping for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Activated two-dimension (2D) materials are used in various applications as high-performance catalysts. Breaking the long-range order of the basal plane of 2D materials can highly promote catalytic activity by supplying more active sites. Here we developed a method to synthesize ultrathin MCoO_x (M = V, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn) amorphous nanosheets (ANSs). These Co-based ANSs show high oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity in alkaline solution due to the broken long-range order and the presence of abundant low bonded O on the basal plane. The stable Fe₁Co₁O_x ANSs also show an overpotential of ca. 240 mV of achieving 10 mA/cm² in OER, better than most reported transition metal-based electrocatalysts.