Revealing the effect of various organic ligands on the OER activity of MOF-derived 3D hierarchical cobalt oxide @ carbon nanostructures

Intensive research work on the robust and highly active non-precious electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reactions (OERs) under lenient conditions has been attracted much attention to industrialize water-splitting processes. In this work, we design and develop the cost-effective and highly active Co 3 O 4 @C nanostructures derived from two different metal-organic framework (MOF) ligands, including terephthalic acid (PA) and trimesic acid (TMA), through a wet chemical strategy. The unique morphologies (donuts and nanorods over a carbon layer) and excellent surface area of the as-prepared catalysts including Co 3 O 4 @C-PA and Co 3 O 4 @C-TMA are resulted the increased active centers for OER activity. Among the prepared electrocatalysts, Co 3 O 4 @C-TMA exhibits favorable Tafel kinetics (85.18 mV dec -1 ) and small overpotential (320 mV @10 mA cm -2 ) for oxygen evolution. In addition to design the effective Co 3 O 4 @C electrodes for OER activity, this study also proposes the various multi-functional catalysts for renewable energy conversion applications. • MOF-derived Co 3 O 4 @C electrocatalysts were prepared by wet-chemical process • The as-prepared catalyst exhibited nanorod-like morphology • It achieved a small overpotential of 320 mV at 10 mA cm -2 • The small Tafel slope of 85.18 mV dec -1 was achieved