Ultrathin Spinel‐Structured Nanosheets Rich in Oxygen Deficiencies for Enhanced Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation

作者：Jian Bao, Xiaodong Zhang, Bo Fan, Jiajia Zhang, Min Zhou, Wenlong Yang, Xin Hu, Hui Wang, Bicai Pan, Yi Xie · 发表于：Angewandte Chemie · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1002/ange.201502226 · 被引用次数：485 · 研究领域：Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion、Advanced battery technologies research、Electrochemical Analysis and Applications

Abstract Electrochemical water splitting is a clean technology for H 2 fuels, but greatly hindered by the slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, a series of spinel‐structured nanosheets with oxygen deficiencies and ultrathin thicknesses were designed to increase the reactivity and the number of active sites of the catalysts, which were then taken as an excellent platform for promoting the water oxidation process. Theoretical investigations showed that the oxygen vacancies confined in the ultrathin nanosheet could lower the adsorption energy of H 2 O, leading to increased OER efficiency. As expected, the NiCo 2 O 4 ultrathin nanosheets rich in oxygen vacancies exhibited a large current density of 285 mA cm −2 at 0.8 V and a small overpotential of 0.32 V, both of which are superior to the corresponding values of bulk samples or samples with few oxygen deficiencies and even higher than those of most reported non‐precious‐metal catalysts. This work should provide a new pathway for the design of advanced OER catalysts.