Cu vacancy engineering on facet dependent CuO to enhance water oxidation efficiency

The performance of the electrocatalyst is strongly depended on its electronic structure. Herein, the cuprous oxide (Cu2O) with three different morphology (facet) is successfully synthesized to reveal the correlated relationship between oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity and electronic structure, where the Cu2O cube enclosed by high electronic density facet (100) exhibits enhanced OER performance. Then, CuO samples with different surface oxidation degree are obtained for further investigating the structure-function relationship. Finally, the CuO Cube(3h) with Cu vacancy (V-Cu-CuO Cube(3h)) contains more electroactive species and shows high catalytic performance with an onset overpotential of 252 mV and a Tafel slope of 63.4 mV dec(-1), respectively. It only needs 330 mV overpotential to drive 10 mA cm(-2) current density and maintains its catalytic property for at least 48 h. The density functional theory (DFT) calculation reveals that the exist of VCu has a positive effect on neighboring atoms to generate new electronic states near the Fermi level at the intermediate-absorbed structure, which also optimizes the absorption energy of oxygen intermediates, leading to faster charge transport to participate in the OER. This work provides a guidance for improving the OER performance by accurately regulating the surface charge distribution of the catalyst. (c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The electronic structure of the electrocatalyst strongly influences its performance. In this study, cuprous oxide (Cu2O) with different morphologies and copper oxide (CuO) with different surface oxidation degrees were synthesized to investigate their relationship with oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity. It was found that Cu2O cubes with high electronic density facets exhibited enhanced OER performance, and CuO cubes with Cu vacancies showed high catalytic performance and improved charge transport.