Construction of Ferrocene-based bimetallic CoFe-FcDA nanosheets for efficient oxygen evolution reaction

The development of low-cost, high-performance, and stable non-noble metal electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) applications are crucial for future energy supply. Here, we designed ferrocene-based bimetallic CoFe-FcDA MOF nanosheets to realize high-efficient OER electrocatalysts. The resultant CoFe-FcDA nanosheets exhibited remarkable OER performance in an alkaline medium, OER required just a 251 mV overpotential to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2, which were superior to that of the counterpart CoFe-BDC catalyst. Electrochemical results showed that the ferrocene unit acted as an effective electron transfer intermediate, which was in charge of the brilliant OER performances. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicated that the overall electron transfer capability could be enhanced due to the ferrocene unit, resulting in a theoretical overpotential of 0.60 eV for CoFe-FcDA, which was lower than 0.68 eV for CoFe-BDC. These results provided a potential pathway to achieve high-performance OER electrocatalysts.