Anchoring CoFe 2 O 4 Nanoparticles on N-Doped Carbon Nanofibers for High-Performance Oxygen Evolution Reaction

• Published in: Advanced science 2017-11, Vol.4 (11), p.1700226
• Main Authors: Li, Tongfei, Lv, Yinjie, Su, Jiahui, Wang, Yi, Yang, Qian, Zhang, Yiwei, Zhou, Jiancheng, Xu, Lin, Sun, Dongmei, Tang, Yawen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2198-3844; 2198-3844
• DOI: 10.1002/advs.201700226

The exploration of earth-abundant and high-efficiency electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of great significant for sustainable energy conversion and storage applications. Although spinel-type binary transition metal oxides (AB O , A, B = metal) represent a class of promising candidates for water oxidation catalysis, their intrinsically inferior electrical conductivity exert remarkably negative impacts on their electrochemical performances. Herein, we demonstrates a feasible electrospinning approach to concurrently synthesize CoFe O nanoparticles homogeneously embedded in 1D N-doped carbon nanofibers (denoted as CoFe O @N-CNFs). By integrating the catalytically active CoFe O nanoparticles with the N-doped carbon nanofibers, the as-synthesized CoFe O @N-CNF nanohybrid manifests superior OER performance with a low overpotential, a large current density, a small Tafel slope, and long-term durability in alkaline solution, outperforming the single component counterparts (pure CoFe O and N-doped carbon nanofibers) and the commercial RuO catalyst. Impressively, the overpotential of CoFe O @N-CNFs at the current density of 30.0 mA cm negatively shifts 186 mV as compared with the commercial RuO catalyst and the current density of the CoFe O @N-CNFs at 1.8 V is almost 3.4 times of that on RuO benchmark. The present work would open a new avenue for the exploration of cost-effective and efficient OER electrocatalysts to substitute noble metals for various renewable energy conversion/storage applications.