Hierarchical Hollow CoWO4-Co(OH)2 Heterostructured Nanoboxes Enabling Efficient Water Oxidation Electrocatalysis

Rational design and construction of well-defined hollow heterostructured nanomaterials assembled by ultrathin nanosheets overtakes crucial role in Herein, a reliable metal-organic framework-mediated and cation-exchange strategy to tune the geometric structure and multicomponent heterostructures has been proposed for the fabrication of hollow CoWO4-Co(OH)2 hierarchical nanoboxes assembled by rich ultrathin nanosheets. Benefiting from the hierarchical hollow nanostructure, the CoWO4-Co(OH)2 nanoboxes offer plenty of metal active centers available for reaction intermediates. Moreover, the well-defined nanointerfaces between CoWO4 and Co(OH)2 can function as the bridge for boosting the efficient electron transfer from CoWO4 to Co(OH)2. As a consequence, the optimized CoWO4-Co(OH)2 nanoboxes can exhibit outstanding electrocatalytic performance toward OER by delivering 10 mA cm-2 with a low overpotential of 280 mV and a small Tafel slope of 70.6 mV dec-1 as well as outstanding electrochemical stability. More importantly, this CoWO4- Co(OH)2 heterostructured nanocatalyst can couple with Pt/C to drive overall water splitting to achieve 10 mA cm-2 with a voltage of 1.57 V.

Automated summary

This study presents a reliable metal-organic framework-mediated and cation-exchange strategy for the fabrication of hollow CoWO4-Co(OH)2 hierarchical nanoboxes. These nanoboxes exhibit outstanding electrocatalytic performance and electrochemical stability, making them suitable for applications in oxygen evolution reaction and overall water splitting.