Hollow structural materials derived from a MOFs/polymer loaded CoRu alloy for significantly boosting electrochemical overall water splitting

Abstract

The development of efficient and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting is essential to solve the energy crisis and environmental problems. Herein, the paper reports a CoRu@N-doped carbon hollow nanostructure (CoRu@NCHNS) material by using MOFs as precursors and adding dopamine (DA) to introduce Ru and N atoms and fabricate hollow structures in one step. Thanks to the synergistic effect of the CoRu alloy, unique hollow structure and N atoms, the material achieves a current density of 10 mA cm⁻² in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with very low overpotentials of 13 mV and 238 mV, respectively. In addition, an overall water splitting device was also assembled using CoRu@NCHNSs-8 h and CoRu@NCHNSs-9 h as the anode and cathode under alkaline conditions, and a current density of 10 mA cm⁻² was obtained at a cell voltage of 1.56 V. This work explores the applications of a hollow structure loaded CoRu alloy in overall water splitting and provides a new idea for the preparation of efficient electrocatalytic overall water splitting materials.