Carbon Cloth Supported Nitrogen Doped Porous Carbon Wrapped Co Nanoparticles for Effective Overall Water Splitting

Abstract

The key to the practical application of overall water splitting is to develop high‐efficient non‐noble metal electrocatalysts. Herein, carbon cloth supported N‐doped porous carbon wrapped Co nanoparticles (CC@Co‐NPC) are constructed with high bifunctional catalytic activity toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline medium. Benefiting from the exposure of abundant Co active sites, and the synergistic effect between Co particles and N‐doped carbon species, the CC@Co‐NPC delivers small overpotentials of 286 and 340\u2005mV at 100\u2005mA\u2009cm−2 with Tafel values of 59 and 97\u2005mV\u2009dec−1 towards OER and HER, respectively. Remarkably, when coupled as CC@Co‐NPC||CC@Co‐NPC cell, only a small voltage of 1.49\u2005V is required to achieve 10\u2005mA\u2009cm−2, making CC@Co‐NPC a potential bifunctional catalyst for overall water splitting.