Facile preparation of CoSe2 nano-vesicle derived from ZIF-67 and their application for efficient water oxidation

Engineering non-precious metal electrocatalysts that accompanied with excellent performance toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains a great challenge. Herein, a class of CoSe2 nano-vesicle that derived from ZIF-67 nanocubes is fabricated by a facile one-pot hydrothermal method. Benefitting from the hollow structure, abundant oxygen vacancies, strong synergistic effect between Co and Se, and facilitated electron transfer rate, the optimized CoSe2-30 exhibits excellent OER performance with a low overpotential of 287 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm−2, and small Tafel slope of 54.3 mV dec−1, which is much superior to the reported OER electrocatalyst derived from ZIF-67 via complicated prepared method. In addition, these electrocatalysts can also maintain original current density and voltage after long-term chronoamperometry and chronopotentiometry tests, respectively. This work demonstrates a favorable hydrothermal method for transforming cubic ZIF-67 nanocrystal structure into hollow CoSe2 nano-vesicle with excellent electrocatalytic performance for OER and thus opens up a sunshine road for the practical applications of water electrolysis.