Amorphous Cobalt-Impregnated Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Encapsulation Nanochain Enhances Long-Lasting Electrochemical Water Splitting

Electrochemical water splitting (EWS) is a promising way to attain H, which has been deemed an ideal substitution for fossil fuels because of renewable and eco-friendly benefits. Developing an amorphous-based simple and structurally flexible non-noble catalyst to offer high performance for commercial applications has become a current interest. Amorphous cobalt-anchored nitrogen-doped carbon nanoparticles (Co@NC-NPs) were designed to have a low overpotential and Tafel as a bifunctional electrocatalyst (HER - 142 mV/80 mV dec and OER - 250 mV/72 mV dec) to achieve 10 mA cm in 1.0 KOH. FE-SEM and HR-TEM described the interconnected nanochain morphology and purity of Co@NC-NPs electrocatalyst, which were confirmed by EDX and elemental mapping. In a full cell water electrolyzer, Co@NC-NPs may act as an anode and cathode electrode material to achieve 1.60 V @ 10 mA cm in a wide pH. The efficient Co@NC-NPs are stable for 100 h without obvious recession. In solar cell applications, Co@NC-NPs catalyst was employed as both positive and negative terminals and evolved enormous bubbles of O and H. As previously mentioned, we covered the amorphization strategy with the optimistic role of structural flexibility and defects to enrich the active sites to improve the electrocatalytic stability. As a promising opinion, the amorphous electrocatalyst provides ultraefficiency for forthcoming developments in EWS.