Facile Synthesis of Mesoporous and Thin-walled Ni-Co Sulfide Nanotubes as Efficient Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Development of high-performance and inexpensive electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of important significance for sustainable energy conversion technologies. In this work, mesoporous Co and Ni–Co sulfide nanotubes with ultrathin nanowalls are designed and fabricated by a facile and template-free solvothermal method. The obtained CoS1.097 nanotubes can be used as an OER electrocatalyst, and the incorporation of Ni into the CoS1.097 lattice could further enhance the catalytic activity of the catalysts. The best-performing Ni0.13Co0.87S1.097 nanotubes exhibit high performance for OER with a small overpotential of 316 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm–2 and excellent stability, which outperform those of commercial IrO2 and most of the studied Co-based OER catalysts. Our work demonstrates a new strategy to design highly efficient non-previous-metal OER electrocatalysts with unique structures and can be extended to other transition-metal-based systems.