Novel lanthanum sulfide–decorated zirconia nanohybrid for enhanced electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction

Metal sulfide and oxides have drawn interest as economical substitutes to noble metal catalysts due to their ability for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activities. The inability of many sulfides and oxide nanocomposite materials has been produced in recent years to significantly boost their low OER activity. In the current study, we fabricated a novel lanthanum sulfide (La2S3) nanocrystal decorated on zirconium dioxide (ZrO2) nanoflakes for OER electrocatalyst. The composite attains a low overpotential of 280 mV at a current density of 10 mA/cm2 and outstanding stability of 30 h. The increased catalytic activity of the Zr-O–O superoxo group is responsible for the transfer of electron tendency from La species to ZrO2, which favors the rupture of the bond of Zr–O in the steady arrangement. Hence, the present work developed an efficient La2S3-decorated ZrO2-based oxygen evolution electrocatalyst instead of using rare earth viable catalysts like ruthenium oxide (RuO2) or iridium oxide (IrO2).Graphical abstract