Surface Reconstruction of Co4N Coupled with CeO2 toward Enhanced Alkaline Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Xinpeng Sun; Yuhang Zhang; Yue Xiao; Zhiqiang Li; Lingzhi Wei; Ge Yao; Helin Niu; Fangcai Zheng

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c02290

Surface Reconstruction of Co₄N Coupled with CeO₂ toward Enhanced Alkaline Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Inorg Chem. 2022 Sep 5;61(35):14140-14147. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c02290. Epub 2022 Aug 19.

Authors

Xinpeng Sun^{1

2}, Yuhang Zhang^{1

2}, Yue Xiao^{1

2}, Zhiqiang Li^{1

2}, Lingzhi Wei^{1

2}, Ge Yao^{1

2}, Helin Niu², Fangcai Zheng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials of Ministry of Education, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.
² Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry of Anhui Province, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.

PMID: 35984771
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c02290

Abstract

Constructing the active interface in a heterojunction electrocatalyst is critical for the electron transfer and intermediate adsorption (O*, OH*, and HOO*) in alkaline oxygen evolution reaction (OER) but still remains challenging. Herein, a CeO₂/Co₄N heterostructure is rationally synthesized through the direct calcination of Ce[Co(CN)₆], followed by thermal nitridation. The in situ electrochemically generated CoOOH on the surface of Co₄N serves as the active site for the OER, and the coupled CeO₂ with oxygen vacancy can optimize the energy barrier of intermediate reactions of the OER, which simultaneously boosts the OER performance. Besides, electrochemical measurement results demonstrate that oxygen vacancies in CeO₂ and optimized absorption free energy originating from the electron transfer between CeO₂ and CoOOH contribute to enhanced OER kinetics. This work provides new insight into regulating the interface heterostructure to rationally design efficient OER electrocatalysts under alkaline conditions.