Mesoporous CoMoO4 hollow tubes derived from POMOFs as efficient electrocatalyst for overall water splitting

Abstract

The development of earth-abundant catalysts for electrocatalytic water splitting has attracted widespread attention. In this work, a novel catalyst of mesoporous CoMoO 4 with hollow tubes (CoMoO 4 HTs) was derived from polyoxometalates based metal-organic frameworks (POMOFs) and combined with calcination . The POMOFs as “preassembly platform” has been synthesized under solvothermal method by introducing H 3 PMo 12 O 40 into Co-BTC system. The CoMoO 4 HTs catalyst possesses remarkable catalytic activity for OER and HER in 1.0 M KOH, which displays a low overpotential of 210 mV and 75 mV at 10 mA cm -2 , respectively. Moreover, the overall water splitting devise by using CoMoO 4 HTs as both the anode and cathode, requires only a cell voltage of 1.57 V to attain the current density of 10 mA cm -2 . Meanwhile, for the overall water splitting, CoMoO 4 HTs electrocatalyst showed excellent electrochemical stability for 72 h in 1.0 M KOH. The superior electrocatalytic properties of CoMoO 4 HTs can be ascribed to the high specific surface area and abundant ion transport channels endowed because of the unique porous and hollow structure. This work provides a new strategy for preparing hollow structure non-noble metal electrocatalysts with high catalytic activity.