Facile and green synthesis cobalt embedded in N-doped porous carbon under zeo-waste conditions as an efficient oxygen evolution reduction catalyst

A facile and green method is developed to synthesize cobalt species embedded in a nitrogen-doped carbon matrix (P–Co@NCs). The materials are synthesized using hard template precursors via single-step in-situ thermal treatment under free solvent conditions. The optimal P–Co@NC composite prepared through rational synthesis and synergic composition shows an efficient electrocatalytic performance for oxygen evolution reduction (OER). The P–Co@NC exhibits the OER overpotential of 350 mv at 10 mA cm −2 and low Tafel 73 mv·dec −1 in 0.1 M KOH electrolyte. The advantage of catalyst is the dispersion of Co species, which are in close interaction with nitrogen-doped carbon matrix. The Co-Nx plays a dominating role among Co species in P–Co@NC and is well protected by the nitrogen-doped carbon matrix layer. That resulted in efficient electron transport on CNTs (high conductivity) that improves the OER performance of P–Co@NC compared to the reference catalysts (IrO 2 and B–Co@NC). The P–Co@NC also showed excellent cycling performance from long-term chronoamperometry testing. Interestingly, the P–Co@NC catalyst could be synthesized straightforward via a short solvent-free single-step process that introduced it as a green and environmental friendly method, which can be potential to develop catalyst based on metal embedded N-doped carbon.