Improving catalytic activity of metal telluride by hybridization: An efficient Ni_3Te_2-CoTe composite electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

摘要

Development of high-performance electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the key to improve the efficiency of many energy conversion process. Metal telluride is a type of low-cost OER catalyst with promising activity. To improve the OER performance of metal telluride, we propose herein the design of composite metal telluride OER catalyst that fully utilizes the advantages of each component in the composite. The developed Ni3Te2-CoTe/CC composite electrocatalyst has a high OER performance than its Ni3Te2 and CoTe counterpart. The improved OER performance of the composite Ni3Te2-CoTe electrocatalyst can be on one hand ascribed to the high density of state near Fermi level in Ni3Te2 phase, as suggested by DFT analysis. On the other hand, the introduction of CoTe phase in the composite effectively enlarges the electrochemical surface area of the catalyst, thus improving the activity of the composite.