Hierarchical Cu@Co-decorated CuO@Co3O4 nanostructure on Cu foam as efficient self-supported catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is significant to the development of next-generation electrochemical energy devices. The exploration for a non-noble metal catalyst for energy conversion to replace rare and expensive noble metals is fully necessary. Herein, a novel hierarchical Cu and Co-decorated CuO@Co3O4 nanorod-thorns structure is generated on the Cu foam (denoted as Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4) and utilized as an efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte. The Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-300 electrode displays low overpotentials for HER (82 mV) electrocatalytic performance at the current density of 10 mA cm−2 and low Tafel slopes of 48 mV dec-1 are also achieved. Impressively, Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-300 can consecutively generate H2 with of its initial performance after 35 h in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte. Meanwhile, the electrochemical performance of Cu/CuO@Co/Co3O4-300 is superior or considerable to most of reported on Cu-based water splitting electrocatalysts. As evidenced, reduction of oxides to metal for electrocatalysts can remarkably raise the catalytic activities for hydrogen evolution reaction. In a word, this work affords a new thought to design efficient non-precious catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction.