Single-Crystal Cobalt Phosphate Nanosheets for Biomimetic Oxygen Evolution in Neutral Electrolytes

Abstract

To improve energy conversion efficiency, the development of active electrocatalysts with similar structural features to photosynthesis II systems (PS-II), which can efficiently catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), have received great research interest. Crystalline cobalt phosphate nanosheets are designed as an efficient OER catalyst in neutral media, showing outstanding performance that even outperforms the noble RuO2 benchmark. The correlation of experimental and computational results reveals that the active sites are the edge-sharing CoO9 structural motif, akin to the molecular geometry of PS-II. This unique structure can facilitate reaction intermediate adsorption and decrease the reaction energy barrier, thus improving the OER kinetics.