Issue 13, 2019

Amorphous film of cerium doped cobalt oxide as a highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

The exploitation of a highly efficient electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is urgently demanded by the wide application of clean hydrogen energy. Herein, we report the facile synthesis of an amorphous film of the cerium doped cobalt oxide (CoOx(Ce)) and its prominent performance in catalysing the OER. The film was deposited by a scalable electrostatic spray deposition method. Cerium doping induces the variation of the crystal structure of cobalt oxide from crystalline to amorphous. Meanwhile, cerium-related oxygen vacancies were introduced with cerium doping, while the chemical state of the cobalt species was unmodified. These factors lead to a drastic increase in the electrochemical surface area and the intrinsic activity of the resultant CoOx(Ce) in the OER. As a consequence, the CoOx(Ce) shows a reduced activation energy of the OER. The amorphous CoOx(Ce) film produces a current density of 20 mA cm−2 at the overpotential of 261 mV, and that of 100 mA cm−2 at 302 mV. The performance is competitive to those of the reported electrocatalysts and commercially available RuO2.

Graphical abstract: Amorphous film of cerium doped cobalt oxide as a highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
03 Jan 2019
Accepted
25 Feb 2019
First published
25 Feb 2019

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 7526-7532

Amorphous film of cerium doped cobalt oxide as a highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

S. Xu, C. Lv, T. He, Z. Huang and C. Zhang, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 7526 DOI: 10.1039/C9TA00061E

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