Facile synthesis of Cu doped cobalt hydroxide (Cu Co(OH)2) nano-sheets for efficient electrocatalytic oxygen evolution

We report herein the facile synthesis of cobalt hydroxide nano-sheets with a uniform uItrathin structure under mild conditions. By doping heteroatoms such as Cu, the nanosheets' morphology and dimension can be well-tuned. The prepared heteroatom-doped cobalt hydroxide nano-sheets exhibit excellent catalytic activity and durability toward the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In particular, Cu-doped cobalt hydroxide (Cu-Co(OH)(2)) shows an electrocatalytic current density of 10 mA cm(-2) and a mass activity of 46 A g(-1) at the overpotential of 300 mV, and a TafeI slope of 47 mV dec(-1), which are markedly higher than those of the state-of-the-art IrO2. Importantly, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) suggests the modulated electronic structure by the heteroatom doping, which implies that Co ions are more positively charged than the normal 2+ and is thus in favor of the OER performance. This work presents a green and facile strategy for the synthesis of heteroatom in situ doped uItrathin hydroxides which show excellent performance for the OER. A possible OER mechanism of this heteroatom doped Co(OH)(2) material has also been proposed.