Monodispersed ferric oxide nanoboxes as low-cost catalyst for long-term electrochemical hydrogen generation

Synthesis of effective electrocatalysts for water splitting has always been the research focus of scientists. Tran-sition metal oxides are representative of advanced elecrocatalysts because of their sufficient sources, low-cost, environmental friendliness, chemical tunable composition, easy preparation and compositional/structural di-versity. In this study, we report facilely synthesized monodispersed ferric oxide (Fe2O3) nanoboxes, which avoids the problem of agglomeration. The Fe2O3 nanoboxes demonstrate better hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance than those of common Fe2O3 nanoparticles and calcined samples. And, they exhibit the high sta-bility for long-term HER tests of 10,000 cyclic voltammetry (CV) cycles and steady current values over 20 h in alkaline solution. Moreover, it is proved that electrochemical surface area (ECSA) dominates the HER perfor-mance of Fe2O3 nanoboxes, instead of physical specific surface area.