Amorphous Co2B Grown on CoSe2 Nanosheets as a Hybrid Catalyst for Efficient Overall Water Splitting in Alkaline Medium

Yaxiao Guo; Zhaoyang Yao; Changshuai Shang; Erkang Wang

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b10605

Amorphous Co₂B Grown on CoSe₂ Nanosheets as a Hybrid Catalyst for Efficient Overall Water Splitting in Alkaline Medium

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Nov 15;9(45):39312-39317. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b10605. Epub 2017 Oct 31.

Authors

Yaxiao Guo^{1

2}, Zhaoyang Yao³, Changshuai Shang^{1

2}, Erkang Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Changchun, Jilin 130022, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Washington , Seattle 98105, United States.

PMID: 29057652
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b10605

Abstract

In this work, we synthesized a novel hybrid catalyst (Co₂B/CoSe₂) by growing amorphous Co₂B on the surface of CoSe₂ nanosheets. Benefiting from the prominent coupled effects between Co₂B and CoSe₂ nanosheets, an efficient oxygen evolution reaction catalyst Co₂B/CoSe₂ exhibits a very low overpotential of 320 mV @ 10 mA cm^-2 with a Tafel slope of 56.0 mV dec^-1 in alkaline medium. An overpotential of 300 mV can also be achieved by Co₂B/CoSe₂ at the same condition for hydrogen evolution reaction. Notably, at the applied potential of 1.73 V, the electrocatalyst Co₂B/CoSe₂ demonstrates a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 for overall water splitting and displays an outstanding long-term stability. The faradaic efficiencies of Co₂B/CoSe₂ for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution are close to 100%.

Keywords: Co2B nanosheets; CoSe2 nanosheets; hydrogen evolution reaction; oxygen evolution reaction; water splitting.