Hierarchical Cu@Co-decorated CuO@Co3O4 nanostructure on Cu foam as efficient self-supported catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is significant to the development of next-generation electrochemical energy devices. The exploration for a non-noble metal catalyst for energy conversion to replace rare and expensive noble metals is fully necessary. Herein, a novel hierarchical Cu and Co-decorated CuO@Co3O4 nanorod-thorns structure is generated on the Cu foam (denoted as Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4) and utilized as an efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte. The Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-300 electrode displays low overpotentials for HER (82 mV) electrocatalytic performance at the current density of 10 mA cm-2 and low Tafel slopes of 48 mV dec-1 are also achieved. Impressively, Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-30 0 can consecutively generate H2 with of its initial performance after 35 h in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte. Meanwhile, the electrochemical performance of Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-300 is superior or considerable to most of reported on Cubased water splitting electrocatalysts. As evidenced, reduction of oxides to metal for electrocatalysts can remarkably raise the catalytic activities for hydrogen evolution reaction. In a word, this work affords a new thought to design efficient non-precious catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.