Surface decorated cobalt sulfide as efficient catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction and its intrinsic activity

Jingde Li, Guihua Liu, Jing Fu, Gaopeng Jiang, Dan Luo, Fathy M. Hassan, Jing Zhang, Ya Ping Deng, Pan Xu, Luis Ricardez-Sandoval, Zhongwei Chen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Here, we report an efficient surface decorated, e.g. oxidation and nitrogen doped, cobalt sulfide (O-N-Co9S8) oxygen electrocatalyst, which shows excellent activity especially for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and good stability over 900 charge-discharge cycles at 10 mA cm−2 in Zinc-air battery. Moreover, we found that O-N-Co9S8 was completely converted into Co3O4 after OER, showing oxide is actual active phase. Density functional theory calculations reveal the continuous exposure of oxidized surface Co sites during O-N-Co9S8 → Co3O4 is essential for its high OER activity. These Co sites promote the kinetics for OH transformation to O and also ensure fast O2 desorption. Once Co3O4 is generated, the high activity is contributed by its resulting characteristic surfaces. Thus, we propose and demonstrate that oxides in-situ generated during OER are more active than the directly calcined oxides. This work advances fundamental insight of metal chalcogenides “catalysts” and guides the design of active OER catalysts.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)43-52
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Catalysis
Volume367
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2018
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Cobalt sulfide
  • Density functional calculations
  • Metal chalcogenides
  • Oxygen evolution reaction
  • Zinc-air battery

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Catalysis
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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