Phase transformation fabrication of a Cu2S nanoplate as an efficient catalyst for water oxidation with glycine

Li An; Panpan Zhou; Jie Yin; He Liu; Fengjuan Chen; Hongyan Liu; Yaping Du; Pinxian Xi

doi:10.1021/ic502920r

Phase transformation fabrication of a Cu2S nanoplate as an efficient catalyst for water oxidation with glycine

Inorg Chem. 2015 Apr 6;54(7):3281-9. doi: 10.1021/ic502920r. Epub 2015 Mar 23.

Authors

Li An¹, Panpan Zhou¹, Jie Yin¹, He Liu¹, Fengjuan Chen¹, Hongyan Liu¹, Yaping Du², Pinxian Xi¹

Affiliations

¹ †Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metal Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province, State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry and College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and The Research Center of Biomedical Nanotechnology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, P. R. China.
² ‡Frontier Institute of Chemistry, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology Jointly with College of Science, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, P. R.China.

PMID: 25797063
DOI: 10.1021/ic502920r

Abstract

The synthesis of semiconducting nanoplates (NPs) with defined crystal phase is of particular interest, especially their intriguing properties related to the size, shape, and crystal phase. Herein, a liquid-state transformation process from hexagonal-phase CuS NPs is employed to fabricate the cubic-phase Cu2S NPs. The CuS NPs were converted into Cu2S NPs but maintained the morphology. The Cu2S NPs exhibit better oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity than CuS NPs. Furthermore, the OER activity of Cu2S NPs can be improved by the addition of a glycine (Gly) solution. The Cu2S NPs with Gly in a phosphate buffer solution exhibit excellent OER activity and durability, which approaches that of the best known commercial Ir/C (20%) nanocatalyst. In this work, a good strategy for fabricating a noble-metal-free OER catalyst has been proposed, which could provide insight into developing new water oxidation catalysts with high activity.