Pick a Wick: A Simple, Ultrafast Combustion Synthesis of Co₃O₄ Dispersed Carbon for Enhanced Oxygen Evolution Kinetics

Abstract

Mass transport and charge transfer at an interface play a crucial role in governing the electrochemical performance of a material. Wider meso-/macropores are expected to enhance the reaction kinetics by facilitating the ion transport to and fro from an active interface, thereby continuously regenerating it at accelerated rates. Herein, we report a generic, simple, and ultrafast synthetic method to obtain highly graphitized porous carbon containing well-dispersed Co3O4 nanoparticles (∼1 wt % Co) using cobalt acetate and piperidine precursors. The obtained catalyst (Co3O4@CS) exhibits onset potential and oxygen evolution kinetics similar to that of the state-of-the-art catalyst, RuO2. For oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the synthesized material exhibits excellent cycling performance over 2000 cycles. Such a performance metric can be attributed to the uniform dispersion of active sites (Co3O4) over a low-density, highly interconnected conducting carbon matrix leading to facile mass transport and charge transfer, respectively.