Breaking the Local Symmetry of LiCoO<sub>2</sub> via Atomic Doping for Efficient Oxygen Evolution.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31675477.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03523.
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Abstract
The obstacle for efficient electrochemical water splitting lies in the kinetically sluggish oxygen evolution reaction. Despite the various efforts that have been made to understand and tune the active sites for oxygen evolution reaction, an insight into the configurations of active sites from the electronic perspective is still lacking. Here, we report an atomic doping strategy to break the <i>O</i><sub><i>h</i></sub> symmetry of the CoO<sub>6</sub> octahedron in LiCoO<sub>2</sub>. The specific activity of the La-doped LiCoO<sub>2</sub> was 3.14 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> at the overpotential of 0.35 V, which was 8.3 times higher than that of pristine LiCoO<sub>2</sub>. The overpotential with a value of 330 mV at 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> was the lowest among the LiCoO<sub>2</sub>-based OER electrocatalysts ever reported. Mechanistic studies revealed that the superior activity originated from the asymmetric octahedral coordination of Co, resulting in the enhanced electronic conductivity and Co-O hybridization for the accelerated oxygen evolution kinetics. This work opens a door to enhance the catalytic performance through the manipulation of local symmetry.