Hollow waxberry-like cobalt-nickel oxide/S,N-codoped carbon nanospheres as a trifunctional electrocatalyst for OER, ORR, and HER

Qing Zhang; Wenjie Han; Zhixiao Xu; Yinling Li; Lu Chen; Zhengyu Bai; Lin Yang; Xiaolei Wang

doi:10.1039/d0ra03222k

Hollow waxberry-like cobalt-nickel oxide/S,N-codoped carbon nanospheres as a trifunctional electrocatalyst for OER, ORR, and HER

RSC Adv. 2020 Jul 24;10(46):27788-27793. doi: 10.1039/d0ra03222k. eCollection 2020 Jul 21.

Authors

Qing Zhang¹, Wenjie Han¹, Zhixiao Xu², Yinling Li¹, Lu Chen³, Zhengyu Bai¹, Lin Yang¹, Xiaolei Wang^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Henan Province for Green Manufacturing of Fine Chemicals, Henan Key Laboratory of Boron Chemistry and Advanced Energy Materials, Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Media and Reactions, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Henan Normal University Xinxiang Henan 453007 PR China baizhengyu@htu.edu.cn.
² Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 1H9 Canada xiaolei.wang@ualberta.ca.
³ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Concordia University Montreal Quebec H3G 1M8 Canada.

Abstract

With the aggravation of the energy crisis, increasing attention has been paid to electrocatalytic technology for renewable energy devices. In particular, the research on catalysts towards the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has become more urgent, and the development of multifunctional electrocatalysts has become a research trend. Here we report the synthesis of waxberry-like cobalt-nickel oxide/S,N-codoped carbon hollow nanocomposites as trifunctional catalysts. Uniform cobalt-nickel glycerate solid spheres are first synthesized as the precursor and subsequently chemically transformed into cobalt-nickel oxide/S,N-codoped carbon hollow nanospheres. Benefiting from the synergistic coupling of cobalt-nickel oxide and S,N-codoped carbon nanocomposites, hierarchical porosity and hollow structure, the cobalt-nickel oxide/S,N-codoped carbon nanohybrids exhibit superior trifunctional electrocatalytic activity and durability towards OER, ORR, and HER in alkaline media.