Cobalt Selenide Nanostructures: An Efficient Bifunctional Catalyst with High Current Density at Low Coverage

Electrodeposited Co₇Se₈ nanostructures exhibiting flake-like morphology show bifunctional catalytic activity for oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution reaction (OER and HER, respectively) in alkaline medium with long-term durability (>12 h) and high Faradaic efficiency (99.62%). In addition to low Tafel slope (32.6 mV per decade), the Co₇Se₈ OER electrocatalyst also exhibited very low overpotential to achieve 10 mA cm^–2 (0.26 V) which is lower than other transition metal chalcogenide based OER electrocatalysts reported in the literature and significantly lower than the state-of-the-art precious metal oxides. A low Tafel slope (59.1 mV per decade) was also obtained for the HER catalytic activity in alkaline electrolyte. The OER catalytic activity could be further improved by creating arrays of 3-dimensional rod-like and tubular structures of Co₇Se₈ through confined electrodeposition on lithographically patterned nanoelectrodes. Such arrays of patterned nanostructures produced exceptionally high mass activity and gravimetric current density (∼68 000 A g^–1) compared to the planar thin films (∼220 A g^–1). Such high mass activity of the catalysts underlines reduction in usage of the active material without compromising efficiency and their practical applicability. The catalyst layer could be electrodeposited on different substrates, and an effect of the substrate surface on the catalytic activity was also investigated. The Co₇Se₈ bifunctional catalyst enabled water electrolysis in alkaline solution at a cell voltage of 1.6 V. The electrodeposition works with exceptional reproducibility on any conducting substrate and shows unprecedented catalytic performance especially with the patterned growth of catalyst rods and tubes