A high-performance oxygen evolution electrocatalyst based on partially amorphous bimetallic cobalt iron boride nanosheet. (30th October 2020) - Li, Yao
Abstract: The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a crucial role in various electrochemical energy conversion devices, but it greatly suffers from sluggish kinetic. Therefore, developing economical and high-active electrocatalysts with superior durability and high efficiency for OER is still a huge challenge. Herein, a partially amorphous nanosheet-liked bimetallic cobalt iron boride is directly grown on the nickel foam (CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF) via a facile electroless plating method and adopted as a catalyst for OER. Benefiting from the rational designed nanosheet array which provides large surface areas and more open-pathways to obtain fast electron transportation and gas release, the resulted CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF catalyst exhibits excellent catalytic activity and superior electrochemical stability in alkaline medium. The obtained CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF exhibits an overpotential of 260 mV to reach the current density of 20 mA cm −2 . Most importantly, the CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF possesses a small Tafel slope of 38 mV dec −1 and excellent stability with insignificant activity degradation after successive electrolytic measurement (for over 60 h) at 20, 50 and 100 mA cm −2 in 1.0 M KOH, respectively. This work provides a simple and rapid strategy to prepare bimetallic borides and broadens the way for the development of efficient OER catalysts. Graphical abstract: We report the partially amorphous bimetallic cobalt iron boride nanosheets directly grown on nickel foam (CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF) has been synthesized by a facile electroless plating method as a novel catalyst for OER. The obtained CoFeB-5-30 NS/NF exhibits excellent catalytic activity, which requires a low overpotential of 260 mV to reach the current density of 20 mA cm −2 and has a small Tafel slope of 38 mV dec −1 in alkaline medium. It also displays a superior electrochemical stability with insignificant activity loss after successive electrolytic measurement over 60 h at 20, 50 and 100 mA cm −2 in 1.0 M KOH, respectively. Image 1 Highlights: A novel cobalt iron catalyst is synthesized by a facile electroless plating method. The catalyst shows excellent catalytic activity for OER. This work provides a rapid method to synthesize metallic borides for OER.