Manganese doped tailored cobalt sulfide as an accelerated catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Developing an efficient, robust, and noble metal-free electrocatalyst that can catalyse oxygen evolution reactions (OER) remains a significant challenge. CoS₂, a representative of pyrite form transition metal dichalcogenides, has recently been identified as an economical catalyst. Here, an incredibly quick and scalable technique for novel catalysts synthesized with the use of the microwave method was introduced. Manganese-doped cobalt sulphide (Mn-CoS₂) showed outstanding OER with a very low overpotential of 227 mV at 10 mA cm^-2. Exposure of surface atoms resulted in high electrochemical activity, where the defects facilitated charge and mass transfer along the nanostructure, allowing surface dependent electrochemical reactions to be performed more efficiently. The electronic properties of pristine and transition-metal-doped CoS₂ structures were also investigated using density functional theory (DFT). To better understand transition metal's dependent impact on crystal structure, orbital electronic participation, charge density, and charge transformation in both pristine and Mn-dopedCoS₂ frameworks were calculated and analysized. Our synthesis approach is primarily commercial and extensible, overcoming synthesis challenge of transition metal sulphide nanostructures with prime quality and implying a potential for commercial uses.