Co-MOF Nanosheets Etched by FeCl2 Solution for Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution

The appearance of mixed-metal MOF materials with abundant metal active sites, high porosity, large surface area, and, particularly, the synergistic effect between different metals which show prominent catalytic activity for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has motivated profound research. Most of the related reports focus on the hydrothermal methods to prepare the mixed-metal MOFs containing metal ions such as Co, Ni, and Cr, etc. In this work, we proposed a facile impregnation method through an ion-exchange process to fabricate Fe-doped Co-BDC nanosheets (Fe@Co-BDC NSs) that represented significant enhancement for electrocatalytic OER. The tuning mechanism of the ion-exchange method was investigated by the morphology change and electronic structure of Fe@Co-BDC NSs, which should be important for an efficient OER catalyst. The optimized Fe@Co-BDC NSs (5 mM, 60 min) exhibited a significantly lower overpotential of 307 mV with a smaller Tafel slope of 34.1 mV·dec–1, as compared with the pure Co-BDC NSs.