One-step hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO nanorods as efficient oxygen evolution reaction catalyst

To deal with rapid depletion of fossil fuels and increasing demand of energy, development of highly efficient non-noble metal based catalyst has attracted much attention. Therefore, in this study reported a facile one-step hydrothermal synthesis of ZnO nanorods. The structural and morphological properties of the synthesized sample have been studied through X-ray Diffraction analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscope, SEM-based Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. Electrochemical studies toward oxygen evolution reaction are evaluated via cyclic voltammetric measurements (CV) and linear sweep voltammetric (LSV) measurements. It has been found that ZnO-nanorods/nickel foam (NF) delivers benchmark 10 mA cm−2 at just 340 mV overpotential, which is superior than previously reported oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. The overall findings of the current study provide a cost-effective and efficient synthesis of ZnO-nanorods for application as an electrocatalyst.