Trace Cobalt Doping and Defect Engineering of High Surface Area α-Ni(OH)₂ for Electrocatalytic Urea Oxidation

Abstract

Owing to the intrinsically sluggish kinetics of urea oxidation reaction (UOR) involving a six-electron transfer process, developing efficient UOR electrocatalyst is a great challenge remained to be overwhelmed. Herein, by taking advantage of 2-Methylimidazole, of which is a kind of alkali in water and owns strong coordination ability to Co²⁺ in methanol, trace Co (1.0 mol%) addition was found to induce defect engineering on α-Ni(OH)₂ in a dual-solvent system of water and methanol. Physical characterization results revealed that the synthesized electrocatalyst (WM-Ni_0.99Co_0.01(OH)₂) was a kind of defective nanosheet with thickness around 5-6 nm, attributing to the synergistic effect of Co doping and defect engineering, its electron structure was finely altered, and its specific surface area was tremendously enlarged from 68 to 172.3 m² g^-1. With all these merits, its overpotential to drive 10 mA cm^-2 was reduced by 110 mV. Besides, the interfacial behavior of UOR was also well deciphered by operando electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

Keywords

defect engineering / electrocatalysis / small molecule oxidation

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