MOF-directed templating synthesis of hollow nickel-cobalt sulfide with enhanced electrocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution

• Published in: International journal of hydrogen energy 2018-05, Vol.43 (18), p.8815-8823
• Main Authors: Yu, Zhou, Bai, Yu, Zhang, Shimin, Liu, Yuxuan, Zhang, Naiqing, Sun, Kening
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Nickel-cobalt sulfide; Oxygen evolution reaction; Porous hollow polyhedron; Zeolitic imidazolate framework
• ISSN: 0360-3199; 1879-3487
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.03.154

The development of efficient, universal and cheap electrocatalysts for the utilization in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) by desired morphology and composition remains a great challenge. Herein, we report a facile and novel method to prepare the porous hollow nickel-cobalt sulfide (NiCoS) by using zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) as the template. The obtained NiCoS-3 polyhedron shows superior catalytic activity toward OER with a low overpotential of 320 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm−2, a small Tafel slope of 58.8 mV dec−1 and excellent stability. Benefiting from their structural and compositional merits, the as-synthesized NiCoS-3 polyhedron may be a good promising candidate electrocatalysts for water splitting. Present work provides a simple strategy to regulated composition, morphology and catalytic activity relationship, offer an effective way to design a low-cost and efficient electrocatalyst. •Porous hollow NiCoS by employing ZIF-67 as template was prepared.•The prepared NiCoS-3 exhibit excellent activity and stability towards OER.•The improved OER activity is due to the optimized Ni substitution.•The porous hollow structure can afford a large surface area and more active sites.