Nitrogen-doped Binary Spinel CuCo2O4/C Nanocomposite: An Efficient Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on the anode side is one of the bottlenecks for electrochemical water splitting, and the search for cost-effective and efficient catalysts for OER is highly pursued. Herein, through calcination and nitridation treatment of the Cu-Co based bimetallic metal-organic framework precursor, nitrogen doped CuCo2O4/nitrogen-doped carbon (N-CuCo2O4@N-C) are successfully synthesized. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements reveal the evident change of electronic state after doping N atoms into CuCo2O4@N-C. When used as an OER electrocatalyst, N-CuCo2O4@N-C catalysts offer an overpotential of only 260 mV to reach 10 mA cm(-2), which is comparable to commercial RuO(2)catalyst. The N-CuCo2O4@N-C sample possesses a lower Tafel slope than pristine CuCo2O4@N-C sample. Moreover, a chronoamperometric study reveals that N-CuCo2O4@N-C displays excellent stability for at least 28 h. This work provides a promising heteroatom doping strategy to fabricate high-performance OER electrocatalysts for water splitting.