Carbon-encapsulated Co3V decorated Co2VO4 nanosheets for enhanced urea oxidation and hydrogen evolution reaction
By Pan, Miaojing; Chen, Wei; Qian, Guangfu; Yu, Tianqi; Wang, Zhenglin; Luo, Lin; Yin, Shibin
Published in Electrochimica Acta
2022
Abstract
Exploiting highly efficient catalysts to treat wastewater containing urea via electrocatalytic oxidation is significant for environmental protection and energy requirements. Hence, a carbon-encapsulated Co3V decorated Co2VO4 nanosheets catalyst (Co3V@C/Co2VO4) is synthesized to accelerate urea oxidation reaction (UOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). It displays low potentials of 1.31 V and −51 mV to drive ±10 mA cm−2 in 1.0 M KOH + 0.5 M urea solution for UOR and HER, respectively. Impressively, for urea-assisted water splitting, only 1.37 V is needed to deliver 10 mA cm−2, and it can maintain at 100 mA cm−2 for 100 h without significant activity decay. The good performance is attributed to the heterojunction between alloy and metal oxide, as well as the carbon-encapsulating and distinctive nanosheets structure. This study provides a novel choice for developing low cost and high-performance bifunctional catalysts to deal with urea-contained wastewater and produce hydrogen.