Hydrothermal synthesized delafossite CuGaO₂ as an electrocatalyst for water oxidation

Hydrogen production from water splitting provides an effective method to alleviate the ever-growing global energy crisis. In this work, delafossite CuGaO₂ (CGO) crystal was synthesized through hydrothermal routes with Cu(NO₃)₂·3H₂O and Ga(NO₃)₃·xH₂O used as reactants. The addition of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) was found to play an important role in modifying the morphology of CuGaO₂ (CGO-CTAB). With the addition of CTAB, the morphology of CGO-CTAB samples changed from irregular flake to typical hexagonal sheet microstructure, with an average size of 1-2 μm and a thickness of around 100 nm. Furthermore, the electrocatalytic activity of CGO-CTAB crystals for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) was also studied and compared with that of CGO crystals. CGO-CTAB samples exhibited better activity than CGO. An overpotential of 391.5 mV was shown to be able to generate a current density of 10 mA/cm². The as-prepared samples also demonstrate good stability for water oxidation and relatively fast OER kinetics with a Tafel slope of 56.4 mV/dec. This work highlights the significant role of modification of CTAB surfactants in preparing CGO related crystals, and the introduction of CTAB was found to help to improve their electrocatalytic activity for OER.