A 3D hierarchical electrocatalyst: Core-shell Cu@Cu(OH)2 nanorods/MOF octahedra supported on N-doped carbon for oxygen evolution reaction

Cu-based materials are seldom reported as oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts due to their inherent electron orbital configuration, which makes them difficult to adsorb oxygen-intermediates during OER. Reasonably engineering the hierarchical architectures and the electronic structures can improve the performance of Cu-based OER catalysts, such as constructing multilevel morphology, inducing the porous materials, improving the Cu valence, building heterostructures, doping heteroatoms, etc. In this work, copper-1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylate (HKUST-1) octahedra in-situ grow on the Cu nanorod (NR)-supported N-doped carbon microplates, meanwhile an active layer of Cu(OH)(2) forms on the surface of the original conductive Cu NRs. The octahedral HKUST-1, serving as a spacer between the microplates, greatly improves the porosity and increases the available active sites, facilitating the mass transport and electron transfer, thus resulting in greatly enhanced OER performance.

Automated summary

Reasonably engineering the hierarchical architectures and the electronic structures can improve the performance of Cu-based oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. In this work, octahedral HKUST-1 serves as a spacer between N-doped carbon microplates supported by Cu nanorods, greatly improving the porosity and increasing the available active sites, facilitating the mass transport and electron transfer, thus resulting in greatly enhanced OER performance.