Surface engineering on Co₃O₄ through quenching with cold salt solution for enhance oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

The surface engineering has been testified to be an effective strategy for optimizing oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity. Nevertheless, many of these techniques involve complex and multiple synthesis process, which leads to potential safety hazards, raises the cost of production, and hinders the scaled-up application. Herein, a facile strategy (i.e., quenching with lanthanum nitrate cold salt solution) was adopted to fabricate the surface of Co₃O₄ grown on nickel foam, and boost the electrocatalytic performance for OER. Analyses of the experimental results show that the surface engineering strategy can induce many defects on the surface of Co₃O₄, including microcracks and oxygen vacancies, which provides more active sites for electrochemical reaction. Consequently, the treated sample exhibits significantly improved OER electrocatalytic activity, requiring only 311 mV to deliver 100 mA·cm⁻² for OER in alkaline solution. This work highlights the feasibility of designing advanced electrocatalysts towards OER via quenching and extends the use of quenching chemistry in catalysis.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

electrocatalysis / oxygen evolution reaction / spinel oxide / surface engineering / cold salt solution quenching

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Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52101215) and the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province, China (2024-BS-315).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Online appendix

Electronic supplementary material (ESM) can be found in the online version at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-025-0718-z and https://journal.hep.com.cn/foms/EN/10.1007/s11706-025-0718-z that includes Figs. S1–S2,

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