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Abstract
Water electrolysis is an attractive approach for hydrogen production process and has enormous potential for sustainable clean energy development. This work demonstrates a controllable and reliable method for in-situ decorating of mesoporous titanium dioxide (m-TiO2) support with low loading (0.1- 2.1 wt. %) of cobalt oxide for an efficient electrocatalytic oxygen evolution (OE) in alkaline solution. The ordered (m-TiO2) support modified with cobalt oxide and having uniform mesopores (3-5 nm pore diameter) and a crystalline framework is successfully prepared via soft-template strategy using Pluronic ® F127 triblock copolymer as a mesopores template. Compared to the pure TiO2 mesoporous, the entire Co oxide doped (Co(x)/m-TiO2) catalysts exhibit greatly enhanced OE activity in spite of the low loading of Co oxide electrocatalyst. The Co(2.1)/m-TiO2 catalyst with 2.1 wt. % of Co oxide was the OER most active robust electrocatalyst with a mass activity of 31.5 mA cm 2 mg −1 , the specific activity of 12.6 mA cm −2 at h = 350 mV and 200 mV decrease in overpotential (h) compared to bare m-TiO2. The enhanced OE activity of (Co(x)/m-TiO2) catalysts was attributed to the existence of a uniform distribution of Co oxide electrocatalyst supported on a highly porous structure of the TiO2 substrate.
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