Nitrogen‐doped Binary Spinel CuCo₂O₄/C Nanocomposite: An Efficient Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

Abstract The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on the anode side is one of the bottlenecks for electrochemical water splitting, and the search for cost‐effective and efficient catalysts for OER is highly pursued. Herein, through calcination and nitridation treatment of the Cu−Co based bimetallic metal‐organic framework precursor, nitrogen doped CuCo 2 O 4 /nitrogen‐doped carbon (N−CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C) are successfully synthesized. X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements reveal the evident change of electronic state after doping N atoms into CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C. When used as an OER electrocatalyst, N−CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C catalysts offer an overpotential of only 260 mV to reach 10 mA cm −2 , which is comparable to commercial RuO 2 catalyst. The N−CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C sample possesses a lower Tafel slope than pristine CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C sample. Moreover, a chronoamperometric study reveals that N−CuCo 2 O 4 @N−C displays excellent stability for at least 28 h. This work provides a promising heteroatom doping strategy to fabricate high‐performance OER electrocatalysts for water splitting.