Synthesis and Characterization of Cobalt–Organic Framework as an Electrocatalyst for Water Splitting Application

Abstract

Climate change is seen as a crucial environmental dilemma that humanity will confront in the upcoming decade. For this purpose, the solvothermal-assisted technique is used to create metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), which are porous materials characterized by strong connections between organic ligands and metal ions. The MOF discussed here contains cobalt as the metal node and a linker derived from 2-aminobenzoic acid and terephthalaldehyde. The prepared powder underwent analysis using various techniques including Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area measurement, and thermal analysis. BET analysis revealed a surface area of 1587.06 m2/g, a total pore volume of 0.86394 cc/g, and an average pore size of 1.088 nm. The RGO@Co-MOF prepared was utilized to evaluate water splitting efficiency, demonstrating favorable catalytic activity like most reported modified MOF catalysts under low current density conditions of 10 mA/cm2.