EDTA-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of flower-like CoSe2 nanorods as an efficient electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction

Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a prospective method to generate pure hydrogen. The development of superior electrocatalysts based on earth-abundant materials, plays a critical role in the future. CoSe 2 , one of the earth-abundant electrocatalysts, has been proved to be a promising catalyst for hydrogen generation . In our work, flower-like CoSe 2 nanorods with high quality are successfully synthesized through a facile ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid ligand (EDTA)-assisted hydrothermal process. The flower-like CoSe 2 nanorods show the brilliant electrochemical HER performance with 100 mA cm −2 at overpotential of 273 mV, a small Tafel slope of 35 mV dec −1 and strong durability in acid solution. The sparkly HER catalytic activity of CoSe 2 can be ascribed to its particular structure with large surface area and abundant active sites. Therefore, this work offers an outstanding candidate for improving hydrogen production capabilities by water electrolysis .