Synthesis and characterization of Ag2ZnTiS4 nanostructures prepared by a hot-injection method towards low-cost electrocatalytic oxygen evolution†
Abstract
Due to their potential use in generating sustainable energy via electrocatalysis, silver-based quaternary chalcogenide compounds have garnered superior interest. The wide range of properties of the silver-based quaternary chalcogenide compounds are due to their optimized band gaps. For designing a highly efficient solar cell, the band gap of the material that maximizes the absorption of incident light is highly desirable. The band gap of Ag2ZnTiS4 nanoparticles is about 1.46 eV. This compound is earth-abundant, cheap, and non-carcinogenic. Ag2ZnTiS4 (abbreviated as SZTiS) electrodes were synthesized using a hot injection technique for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in 1 M KOH. Electrocatalytic SZTiS electrode data were recorded using an electrochemical workstation. It has been shown that SZTiS/NF300 in 1 M KOH solution has a low overpotential of 275 mV versus the RHE at 10 mA cm−2 and a low Tafel slope of 43 mV dec−1. In addition, 20 hours of stability testing of the SZTiS/NF300 electrode shows that this combination is a strong contender for use in O2 evolution from water splitting.