Octahedral-coordinated Co₃O₄ for water electrolysis in acid.

Authors

Yue Wang, Yujin Ji, Jing Zhou, Jinxin Chen, Chenchen Li, Chendi Zhao, Jia Ke, Yutian Xiong, Sihui Pan, Wei-Hsiang Huang, Chih-Wen Pao, Chang-Yang Kuo, Chien-Te Chen, Youyong Li, Zhiwei Hu, Qi Shao, Xiaoqing Huang

Published in

Nature. Jul 29, 2026. Epub Jul 29, 2026.

Abstract

The development of highly active and stable non-noble metal oxide catalysts to replace iridium-based materials for efficient acidic water electrolysis is crucial^1-3. However, traditional spinel cobalt oxide suffers from intrinsic performance limitations from coexistence of inactive tetrahedral (T_d) and highly active octahedral (O_h) coordination sites^4,5. Here we report a new trigonal-phase Co₃O₄ (Tri-Co₃O₄) produced by a vacuum-mediated molten-alkali mechanochemical method, which shows edge-shared [CoO₆] octahedral coordination with the space group P-3m1 (164). The three-layer compact structure provides Co²⁺ and Co³⁺ located in octahedral coordination in the ratio 1:2. Tri-Co₃O₄ achieves a low overpotential of 269 millivolts (mV) at the current density of 10 mA cm^-2 in the acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER), 181 mV less than spinel-type Co₃O₄. It also achieves a current density exceeding 1,800 mA cm^-2 at a cell voltage of 1.80 V in proton-exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) devices. The catalytic mechanism shows that the 2D layered structure with edge-shared octahedral coordination can effectively optimize the adsorption of intermediates and reduce the dissolution of Co, thereby substantially improving the activity and stability of the non-noble metal catalysts.

PMID:
42527594
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 30 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.