Porphyrin coordination polymer/Co1-xS composite electrocatalyst for efficient oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract It is very imperative to develop cost-effective nonprecious-metal-containing materials with efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity. Herein, a series of novel composite catalysts (TiCP-PCP@Co1-xS) by coupling Co1-xS with porphyrin based porous titanium coordination polymer (TiCP-PCP) was designed and prepared, and was characterized by different spectroscopic techniques. The introduction of TiCP-PCP can significantly increase the number of active sites and tune the electronic structure of Co1-xS to reach affluent surface Co3+ active sites center for boosting OER intrinsic activity. The present study indicates that there is an optimum concentration of TiCP-PCP in the composites to maximize OER performance; the optimized 0.2TiCP-PCP@Co1-xS composite with 20wt% TiCP-PCP exhibits the best OER activity with a low overpotential of 157 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and excellent long-term stability in alkaline solution. The OER performance of 0.2TiCP-PCP@Co1-xS outperforms state-of-the-art nonprecious-metal catalysts (i.e. IrO2 and RuO2) and most previous reported cobalt-based catalysts.