Electrochemical Construction of Low-Crystalline CoOOH Nanosheets with Short-Range Ordered Grains to Improve Oxygen Evolution Activity
Shenghua Ye, Jingpeng Wang, Jing Hu, Zhida Chen, Lirong Zheng, Yonghuan Fu, Yaqi Lei, Xiangzhong Ren, Chuanxin He, Qianling Zhang, Jianhong Liu
Abstract
In this study, low-crystalline CoOOH nanosheet arrays that are grown on carbon fiber cloth (LC-CoOOH NAs/CFC) were prepared using a facile electrochemical strategy for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The low-crystalline CoOOH nanosheets were assembled randomly by numerous short-range (1–5 nm) ordered grains with different orientations, inducing abundant grain boundaries (edge sites of CoOOH). Moreover, a certain number of structural defects (oxygen vacancies) were also engineered on the low-crystalline CoOOH nanosheets. Benefiting from these abundant edge sites of CoOOH and oxygen vacancies, LC-CoOOH NAs/CFC exhibit much improved OER activity compared to the high-crystallinity CoOOH NAs/CFC with a perfect structure. This research provides a new way to synthesize the defective materials with a short-range ordered structure and lays a valuable theoretical foundation for the structure and property of OER catalysts.