title: Engineering the Electrical Conductivity of Lamellar Silver-Doped Cobalt(II) Selenide Nanobelts for Enhanced Oxygen Evolution.
abstract: Precisely engineering the electrical conductivity represents a promising strategy to design efficient catalysts towards oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here, we demonstrate a versatile partial cation exchange method to fabricate lamellar Ag-CoSe2nanobelts with controllable conductivity. The electrical conductivity of the materials was significantly enhanced by the addition of Ag+cations of less than 1.0 %. Moreover, such a trace amount of Ag induced a negligible loss of active sites which was compensated through the effective generation of active sites as shown by the excellent conductivity. Both the enhanced conductivity and the retained active sites contributed to the remarkable electrocatalytic performance of the Ag-CoSe2nanobelts. Relative to the CoSe2nanobelts, the as-prepared Ag-CoSe2nanobelts exhibited a higher current density and a lower Tafel slope towards OER. This strategy represents a rational design of efficient electrocatalysts through finely tuning their electrical conductivities.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Hantao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Jinhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Xingqi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Shiming
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325, USA.
authors.forename: Zhenmeng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Science Center, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zeng
keywords: cation exchange reaction; electrical conductivity; electrocatalysis; nanostructures; oxygen evolution reaction