Oxygen vacancy assisted low–temperature synthesis of P–doped Co3O4 with enhanced activity towards oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract Doping non–metal atoms into transition metal oxides (TMO) is considered as an effective method to improve the catalytic performance of TMO. Nevertheless, it is actually not easy to achieve efficient non–metal doping in TMO. To address this issue, herein, we for the first time put forwards an oxygen vacancy (Vo) assisted doping strategy to achieve high non–metal atoms doping amount in TMO. Firstly, Vo is produced by simple acid etching treatment on pristine Co3O4, and then the obtained Vo decorated Co3O4 (Co3O4–Vo) is used as precursor to conduct P doping. By systematical characterizations and analysis, it is found that the as–formed Vo in Co3O4–Vo plays a role of doping sites, which bring about efficient P doping effect. Even at relatively low temperature, the as–prepared P–doped Co3O4–Vo (P–Co3O4–Vo) is evidenced to display a high P doping amount of 6.1 wt.%, which is much higher than that (1.9 wt.%) of directly P–doped Co3O4 (P–Co3O4). Consequently, P–doped Co3O4–Vo shows significantly enhanced activity towards oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Clearly, this work opens a new avenue to efficiently doping non–metal atoms into TMO.