Zhengmei Zhang

Durable oxygen evolution reaction of one dimensional spinel CoFe2O4 nanofibers fabricated by electrospinning

One dimensional spinel CoFe2O4 nanofibers were synthesized via the electrospinning technique. The nanofibers were calcined at different temperatures. All CoFe2O4 nanofibers show excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance. The nanofibers calcined at 750 °C have a multi-particle nanochain structure. The nanochain exhibits excellent catalytic performance for OER in 1 M KOH (pH = 14) producing a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at an overpotential of 0.34 V, and the small onset potential of 1.32 V versus RHE, better than that of the commercial Ir/C (20%) catalyst. Furthermore, the stability of CoFe2O4 multi-particle nanochains toward the OER decreases by only 0.78% even after a long period of 80 000 s. Our finding suggests that CoFe2O4 nanofibers with a multi-particle nanochain structure could serve as a new group of OER electrocatalysts with excellent performance.

One-Step Electrospinning Method to Prepare Gold Decorated on TiO2 Nanofibers with Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity

A gold doped titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanofiber was prepared by one-step electrospinning technique to control the DC high voltage and the following calcination. The crystal structures and morphology of Au-TiO2 nanofibers were characterized in detail by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive photoelectron spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). These results indicate that Au is successfully incorporated into TiO2 nanofibers without gold loss, while Au and TiO2 form a heterogeneous structure. It implied that the Schottky barrier existed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of 0.075% Au-TiO2. For 0.075% Au-TiO2 nanofibers, the rate of photocatalytic degradation of methylene (MB) was significantly higher than that of pure TiO2 nanofibers.