Cadmium Hydroxide: A Missing Non-Noble Metal Hydroxide Electrocatalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

An emerging non-noble-metal-based oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst, cadmium hydroxide (Cd(OH)2), has been developed in this work; this was prepared via a facile chemical precipitation method by using cadmium salt as the precursor. Without using a noble or first-row transition metal element, the as-obtained Cd(OH)2 nanoplate electrocatalyst exhibits an impressive electrocatalytic OER performance with a low overpotential of 266 mV at the current density of 10 mA/cm2, a low Tafel slope of 47 mV/dec, and considerable stability, results which are superior to those of noble-metal-based commercial RuO2, and comparable to those of a commonly used first-row transition-metal-based catalyst Co(OH)2.