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Published on: December 6, 2021
Amorphous-crystalline heterostructures enable energy-level matching of cobalt sulfide/nickel iron layered double
Shiqi Zang1, Yan Hou2, Jiuli Chang3
1Key Laboratory of Yellow River and Huai River Water Environment and Pollution Control, Ministry of Education, Henan Key Laboratory for Environment Pollution Control, International Joint Laboratory on Key Techniques in Water Treatment, Henan Province, School of Environment, Henan Normal University, Henan Xinxiang 453007, PR China.
Abstract:
Interface engineering of heterostructures has emerged as a promising approach to enhance the catalytic activity of nonprecious electrocatalysts. Herein, a novel amorphous cobalt sulfide-crystalline nickel iron layered double hydroxide (a-CoS@NiFe-LDH) hybrid material is presented for application as an electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Benefitting from the well-matched energy level structures, the a-CoS@NiFe-LDH catalyst delivers a low overpotential of 221 ± 14 mV at an OER current density of 20 mA cm-2 and a small Tafel slope of 83.1 mV dec-1, showing good OER properties. First-principle computations reveal that the electronic interaction between amorphous cobalt sulfide (a-CoS) and crystalline nickel iron layered double hydroxide (NiFe-LDH) components within a-CoS@NiFe-LDH promotes the adsorbate evolution mechanism and reduces the adsorption energies for oxygen intermediates, thereby enhancing the activity and stability for OER. This work opens up a new avenue to enhance the OER catalytic efficiency via the construction of amorphous-crystalline heterostructures.
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