Abstract To realize energy-efficient and cost-effective production of hydrogen by electrochemical water splitting, central to the research endeavors is the exploration of highly active and earth-abundant electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Promising non-noble candidates for OER are often based on transition metal oxides, while carbon-based electrocatalysts typically receive little attention due to their relatively poor performance. In this work, we present a novel method to significantly activate carbon cloth for OER by creating oxygen-containing functional groups on its surface with the assistance of peroxovanadium complexes, which have been seldom used to oxidize carbon materials. Compared to pristine carbon cloth (P-CC), the activated carbon cloth (A-CC) exhibits higher specific surface area and faster electron transfer rate. Particularly, the overpotential of A-CC (310 mV) to afford a current density of 10 mA cm−2 is much lower than that of P-CC and even comparable to that of noble RuO2/C (280 mV), ranking A-CC among the best reported nonmetal catalysts for OER. Moreover, densely distributed VO2 (B) nanoplates in the intermediate product of VO2 (B)/CC can prevent the highly active A-CC from degrading in air for two months, which endows another excellent feature for this fabrication method.

中文翻译：

---

一种显着提高碳布析氧反应电催化活性的新方法

摘要 为了通过电化学水分解实现高能效和低成本的制氢，研究工作的核心是探索高活性和地球丰富的析氧反应（OER）电催化剂。OER 的有前途的非贵金属候选物通常基于过渡金属氧化物，而碳基电催化剂由于其相对较差的性能而通常很少受到关注。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种新方法，通过在过氧钒配合物的帮助下在其表面产生含氧官能团来显着激活用于 OER 的碳布，而过氧钒配合物很少用于氧化碳材料。与原始碳布（P-CC）相比，活性炭布（A-CC）具有更高的比表面积和更快的电子转移速率。特别是A-CC提供10 mA cm-2电流密度的过电位（310 mV）远低于P-CC，甚至可与贵重的RuO2 / C（280 mV）相媲美，排名A- CC 是报道的最佳 OER 非金属催化剂之一。此外，在 VO2 (B)/CC 中间产物中密集分布的 VO2 (B) 纳米片可以防止高活性 A-CC 在空气中降解两个月，这赋予了这种制造方法的另一个优良特性。