Chemical Research in Chinese Universities ›› 2022, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (3): 750-757.doi: 10.1007/s40242-022-1504-4

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Confined Pyrolysis Synthesis of Well-dispersed Cobalt Copper Bimetallic Three-dimensional N-Doped Carbon Framework as Efficient Water Splitting Electrocatalyst

ZHANG Ziqi1,2, WANG Hanbo2, LI Yuxin1,2, XIE Minggang1,2, LI Chunguang1,2, LU Haiyan2, PENG Yu1,2, and SHI Zhan1,2   

  1. 1. State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis & Preparative Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China;
    2. College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China
  • Received:2021-12-09 Revised:2022-01-11 Online:2022-06-01 Published:2022-05-26
  • Contact: SHI Zhan, PENG Yu E-mail:zshi@mail.jlu.edu.cn;pengyu@jlu.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the Foundation of Science and Technology Development of Jilin Province, China(No.20200801004GH), the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.21771084, 21771077, 21621001) and the “111” Project of China(No.B17020). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Program for JLU Science and Technology Innovative Research Team, China(JLUSTIRT).

Abstract: Hydrogen is one of the most desirable alternatives to fossil fuels due to its renewability and large energy density. Electrochemical water splitting, as an environmental-friendly way to produce H2 of high-purity, is drawing more and more attention. Conductive nitrogen-doped carbon frameworks derived from metal-organic frameworks(MOFs) have been applied as promising electrocatalysts thanks to their superior conductivity, numerous active sites and hierarchical porous structures. However, traditional uncontrolled pyrolysis will lead to aggregation or fusion of the metal sites in MOFs or even cause collapse of the three- dimensional structures. Herein, we provide a confinement pyrolysis strategy to fabricate a CoCu bimetallic N-doped carbon framework derived from MOFs, which exhibits satisfactory catalytic performance with overpotentials of 199 mV towards hydrogen evolution reaction and 301 mV towards oxygen evolution reaction to reach 10 mA/cm2 in an alkaline solution. This work presents further inspirations for preserving the original skeleton of MOFs during high temperature pyrolysis in order to obtain more stable and efficient electrocatalyst.

Key words: Metal-organic framework(MOF) derivative, Confined pyrolysis, Bimetallic catalyst, Water splitting, N-Doped carbon framework