Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760

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Communication

Increase of Co 3d projected electronic density of states in AgCoO2 enabled T

an efficient electrocatalyst toward oxygen evolution reaction
Ruirui Zhanga,1, Zhongti Suna,1, Cichang Zongb, Zhiyu Lina, Hao Huanga, Kang Yanga, Jing Chena,
Shuai Liua, Minxue Huanga, Yang Yanga, Wenhua Zhanga, Qianwang Chena,b,
⁎

a
Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Materials Science & Engineering & Department of Chemistry & Collaborative Innovation
Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
b
Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics at Extreme Conditions, High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, Anhui,
China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The rational design and precise optimization of electronic structure of catalyst are highly desirable in developing
AgCoO2 efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts. Here we successfully tailored the surface charge of
Interfacial charge transfer state silver delafossite AgCoO2 (ACO) and turn it into an efficient OER catalysts via tuning surface charge transfer
AgCoO2/Ag hybrid state. XAFS and NEXAFS results evidenced an increased occupied Co 3d projected state in hybrid and a sy-
Surface charge states
nergistic electronic interaction between Ag and ACO. The ACO/Ag catalyst requires an overpotential of 271 mV
OER
to reach the current density of 10 mA cm−2, which is much smaller than that of pure ACO, most Co-oxide-based
Theory calculations
OER electrocatalysts and RuO2 (369 mV) or IrO2 (338 mV) catalysts. Moreover, density functional theory cal-
culations show that the reduction of unoccupied Co 3d projected state in the hybrid brings optimized delocalized
charge density of ACO and decreased reaction free energy barriers involved on the Co site in OER, which are
essential for the unusual performance.

Water electrolysis is one of the most important energy technologies
to produce clean hydrogen fuel [1–3]. However, as a half reaction of
water splitting, the sluggish kinetic of OER greatly limits the efficiency
of water electrolysis devices [4,5]. To date, iridium (Ir) and ruthenium
(Ru) based catalysts are the most common used for the OER, but the
high cost, poor resource and unsatisfactory activity impedes its prac-
tical applications, resulting in an urgent demand for alternative cata-
lysts [6]. Recently, advances in orbital occupation engineering and
theoretical calculations of chemical and structural of materials prop-
erties not only enable better understanding of OER mechanism, but
bring new perspectives towards catalyst structure, promoting the pre-
paration of several high active catalysts [7–11]. Thereby, in searching
for Ir, Ru substitute electrocatalysts, the rational design and precise
optimization of electronic structure of catalyst are key to avoid tedious
trial and unnecessary error. And in this exploration, transition metal
oxides have garnered wide attention for their low-cost, highly efficient
and excellent stability [12].
Among many transition metals, cobalt (Co)-based OER catalysts
have been extensively studied for their high-abundancy, such as CoO
[13], Co3O4 [14], and CoSe2 [15]. However, their underperformance
(10 mA cm2 at overpotentials of 0.34–0.43 V) relative to iridium oxide
experimentally still brings continuous efforts to maximize the utiliza-
tion of the intrinsic activity of Co site. For instance, CoO/hi-Mn3O4
hybrid structure was developed by Qiao et al. as an efficient OER cat-
alyst (overpotential of 378 mV at 10 mA cm2, 1 M KOH, glassy carbon
electrodes) [16]. Huang et al. reported the addition of Fe could opti-
mize the binding energy of surface oxygen intermediates on Co-based
trimetallic oxyhydroxide surface and resulted in enhanced performance
(current density improved from 5.8 mA cm2 to 66.8 mA cm2 at over-
potential of 300 mV, 1 M KOH, Ni foam electrode) [17]. These im-
proved catalytic activity can be ascribed to the optimized charge
transfer or engineered adsorption energy (ΔG) for OER intermediate.
However, to date, constituting a structure with optimized surface
electron configuration that addressing the point of orbital occupation of
Co and optimal ΔG for OER intermediate has rarely been reported for
developing efficient OER catalysts [18].
The silver delafossites, first synthesized by Shannon and et al. in
1971, are a family of layered structure metal oxides, which possess

Corresponding author at: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and Department of Materials Science & Engineering & Department of
⁎

Chemistry & Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
E-mail address: cqw@ustc.edu.cn (Q. Chen).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.12.099
Received 8 October 2018; Received in revised form 24 December 2018; Accepted 31 December 2018
Available online 03 January 2019
2211-2855/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
R. Zhang et al.
unusual structure that the monovalent Ag atoms form a close-packed
plane and stack alternately with edge-sharing CoO2 octahedra layers
[19,20]. Previous studies have proved that silver delafossites possessing
anisotropic electrical property that the conductivity in c-axis is 1000
times higher than perpendicular to the c-axis [21]. Thus, the linear
coordination of O-Ag-O bonds in the cross-plane direction might con-
stitutes a cable-like conductance foundation for Co site. However, owe
to the low delocalized charge density in plane direction, ACO is a
semiconductor, and few studies of their catalytic activity have been
reported due to their poor performance and harsh synthesis condition
[22,23]. Based on these considerations, regulating the surface electron
configuration of the in-plane direction might able to tune delocalized
charge density via increasing the occupied 3d projected state around Co
site and optimize ΔG for OER intermediate, and finally turn ACO de-
lafossites into ideal Co-based materials.
Increasing of occupied projected states suggests higher density of
electron, which is responsible for electron transfer efficiency [24]. The
integration of semiconductor and oxides with metal can tailor their
surface charge states and result in strong electron coupling due to their
difference in work functions [25]. Herein, we propose a tentative
scheme for tailoring the delocalized charge density of ACO via in-
creasing occupied projected states of Co 3d through integrating it with
nano-silver particles, which possess large numbers of delocalized elec-
trons. The ACO/Ag hybrid structure is synthesized at room temperature
via a facile wet chemistry method and followed by optimizing Ag
content through chemical etching. As expected, ACO/Ag exhibits a low
overpotential of 271 mV to achieve current density of 10 mA cm–2,
which is superior to RuO2, IrO2 and bare ACO. Based on our DFT cal-
culation, we find that the combination of Ag and ACO will decrease
reaction free energy barriers involved on the Co site in OER, and sig-
nificantly minimizes the band gap till occurring metallic states in the
Fermi level, resulting in improved electron transfer efficiency. More-
over, to the best of our knowledge, the synthesis of silver delafossite
never occurs in room temperature. This discovery not only provides a
new mild and quick route for synthesizing of the silver delafossite, but
also expands the scope of Co-based high active no-Ir, Ru substitute
electrocatalysts for water oxidation.
Self-Templated method is an effective route to synthesize the pre-
cursor of many high active catalysts [26,27]. The fabrication process of
ACO/Ag is demonstrated in Fig. 1a. First, Co3[Co(CN)6]2·nH2O is syn-
thesized as a template. By mixing with AgNO3 solution, Co3[Co(CN)6]2/
Ag3[Co(CN)6]2 hybrid structure can be formed via ion exchange
method, which. Next, the obtained hybrid will in-situ transform into
ACO/Ag within KOH solution. (Co3[Co(CN)6]2 + 2Ag3[Co(CN)6]2
+ 12KOH→3Ag↓+ 3ACO↓+4K3[Co(CN)6]2 + 6H2O) After removal of
solvent, we optimize the content of Ag through chemical etching, and
the final ACO/Ag hybrid contains 9 wt% metallic Ag (for details, see
Supporting information). The structures of these samples are in-
vestigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution
transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The SEM image demon-
strates that the as-prepared Co3[Co(CN)6]2 possesses smooth surface
and a well-defined cubic structure with an average size of 200 nm
(Fig. 1b). The SEM image in Fig. 1c shows that the Co3[Co(CN)6]2/
Ag3[Co(CN)6]2 preserves the cubic shape except for its surface getting
rougher, while Fig. 1d demonstrates that ACO/Ag shows much coarser
in surfaces than the Co3[Co(CN)6]2/ Ag3[Co(CN)6]2. Elemental map-
ping images shown in Fig. 1e further demonstrate the uniform dis-
tribution of Co, Ag and O. The HRTEM image shows that ACO/Ag is
composed of small silver nanoparticles formed on ACO surface (Fig. 1f).
The Ag nanoparticles and ACO have crystalline structures with lattice
spacing values of 0.204 nm and 0.239 nm (Fig. 1g), which are well
consistent with the d-spacing for (200) plane of silver and (220) plane
of ACO, respectively. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis is conducted to
carry out the crystal phase of the mentioned samples. Fig. 1h-i show the
XRD patterns of the as-prepared Co3[Co(CN)6]2 and Co3[Co(CN)6]2/
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Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760
Ag3[Co(CN)6]2. Fig. 1j confirms the formation of ACO/Ag and pure
ACO after chemical etching.
The electronic structure and coordination environment are ex-
amined by X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and extended
X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS). The Co K-edge of ACO/Ag
shown in Fig. 2a exhibits a similar near-edge structure to that of pre-
viously reported pure ACO, but the curve has a minor shift to lower
energy, indicating the existence of lower valence state of Co [23].
Moreover, the absorption edge position of Ag/ACO is located between
that of CoO and Co3O4, suggesting single Co atom carries positive
charge and the valence state of Co is between + 2 and + 3 (Fig. 2a).
The Fourier-transformed (FT) k3-weighted EXAFS spectra (Fig. 2c)
displays two main peaks at 1.47 Å, and 2.45 Å corresponding to the Co-
O coordination shell [28], (Fourier transformed spectra without phase
correction) and no Co-Co coordination peak at 2.2 Å can be detected by
comparing with Co foil, CoO, Co3O4. No intensity maximum corre-
sponds to Co-Co can be observed. To glean more information about the
interactions between Ag and ACO and the electronic states of Co, soft X-
ray absorption spectra of Co L edge is performed. Fig. 2c demonstrates
that the Co L3-edge of ACO and ACO/Ag hybrid are very close to that of
the high-energy peak of Co3O4 reference, suggesting that Co is mainly
octahedrally coordinated [29,30]. The decrease in the normalized peak
area in ACO/Ag compared to ACO shown in Fig. 2d indicates the re-
duction of unoccupied Co 3d projected state in ACO/Ag. It suggests a
higher electron density of Co site in ACO/Ag hybrid, which can be
ascribed to the transferring of electron from Ag to ACO [24]. XPS
spectra shown in Fig. S1 gives us information about Ag species. The Ag
3d spectra can be deconvoluted into two sets of doublets (Ag 3d5/2 and
Ag 3d3/2) and the deconvolution of Ag 3d5/2 peaks at 368.6 eV can be
assigned to metallic Ag and 368.4 eV for Ag+ [31,32], with the Ag/Ag+
ratio of 0.3:1.64 (From the analysis of the Ag/Ag+ ratio, ACO/Ag
contains 9 wt% metallic Ag and for details see Table S1). The Ag 3d
spectra of pure ACO is given in Fig. S2. Comparing with ACO/Ag, it
shifts to lower energy about 0.3 eV, which can be ascribed to the re-
moved interaction between metallic Ag and AgCoO2. can be fitted as
two individual peak as ~ 368 eV and 374 eV, respectively. This fitting
results are consistent with the previous reported Ag 3d of pure ACO
[33]. The results mentioned above are consistent with our proposal, as
the evidence that the formation of ACO/Ag hybrid structure and the
existence of a synergistic electronic interaction between Ag and ACO.
The OER catalytic activity of the samples are evaluated by a typical
three-electrode cell setup in 1.0 M KOH using glassy carbon electrodes
without iR-corrected for all measurements. The OER activity of a cat-
alyst is correlated with the number and the intrinsic activity of active
sites [34,35]. Firstly, we use a practical parameter, the overpotential
required to reach the current density of 10 mA cm−2, to assess OER
performance. All of the test samples use the same loading amount and
current density calculation is based on disk area or electrochemical
surface area (ESCA). Polarization curves shown in Fig. 3a indicate that
ACO/Ag requires an overpotential of 271 mV to reach the current
density of 10 mA cm−2, which is much smaller than that of ACO
(395 mV), CoO (389 mV), and Co3O4 (465 mV). This value is also
smaller than that of most Co-oxide-based OER electrocatalysts (Table
S6) and the RuO2 (369 mV) or IrO2 (338 mV) catalysts. Interestingly,
ACO/Ag also demonstrates better performance than the mixture of ACO
and Ag. This might be ascribed to the unique in-situ formed ACO/Ag
structure, which exists strong interaction between ACO and Ag. Fur-
thermore, we calculate the turnover frequency (TOF) of ACO/Ag and
the results shown in Fig. 3c demonstrates that it reaches 0.0417 S−1 at
the overpotential of 0.3 V, which is higher than IrO2, RuO2, pure ACO
and other cobalt oxides. In order to investigate the intrinsic activity of
ACO/Ag, RuO2 and IrO2, we use the ESCA rather than disk area for
current density (for details of ECSA measurements, see Fig. S3 and
Table S5). The results shown in Fig. 3d demonstrate that ACO/Ag also
owns the highest OER catalytic activity among three samples (ACO/Ag,
R. Zhang et al. Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760

Fig. 1. a) Schematic illustration of the formation of ACO/Ag; b,c,d) FESEM images of: Co3[Co(CN)6]2 nanocubes, Ag3[Co(CN)6]/Co3[Co(CN)6]2 nanocubes and ACO/
Ag, respectively; e) HAADF-STEM characterization of ACO/Ag, and the corresponding elemental mapping of Ag, Co and O; f) HRTEM image of single ACO/Ag with
inset of Ag NPs size distribution; g) HRTEM image of single ACO/Ag; h,i,j) XRD patterns of Co3[Co(CN)6]2, Ag3[Co(CN)6]/Co3[Co(CN)6]2 and ACO together with
ACO/Ag.

17 mA cm−2 > IrO2, 0.67 mA cm−2 > RuO2, 0.28 mA cm−2), em- durability tests are carried out in O2 saturated 1 M KOH. The perfor-
ploying ESCA determined surface areas at the overpotential of 300 mV mances of the catalysts before and after 5000 potential cycles are pre-
(1.53 V vs RHE). To evaluate the stability of the samples, accelerated sented in Fig. 3e. The test results are only 2.58% loss in the

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R. Zhang et al.
Fig. 2. XANES spectra at the Co K-edge of (a) Co foil, Co3O4, CoO and ACO/Ag, (b) FT at R space, (b) NEXAFS Co L-edge of Co foil, Co3O4, CoO, ACO and ACO/Ag,
(d) Normalized NEXAFS Co L-edge of ACO and ACO/Ag.
overpotential for ACO/Ag. The chronoamperometry and chron-
opotentiometric tests shown in Fig. S4. also suggest its good stability.
Moreover, stability of ACO/Ag is also reflected by its well-retained
structures after the OER testing (see Fig. S5). We also characterized the
XPS spectra of Ag 3d before and after stability test and the results are
shown in Fig. S6. It demonstrates that the binding energies of Ag 3d5/2
and Ag 3d 3/2 have a slight shift (~0.1 eV) to lower energies after
stability test, which suggests that the silver particles are partially oxi-
dize. This might be the reason of the mentioned OER performance loss
after stability test. Electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) results ob-
served from Fig. 3f illustrate that the ACO/Ag hybrid structure exhibits
much faster charge transfer than pure ACO, which is consistent with our
goal.
To further understand the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) pro-
cesses, the DFT-based first principle method [36], combining with
computational hydrogen electrode model (CHE)[37] is adopted to ex-
plain OER performance, the computational details are in the Supporting
information. Based on based our HRTEM characterization results, we
construct exposed ACO (012) surface and Ag2-ACO (012) surface with
2 × 1 × 1 supercell is applied to act as the active surface in Fig. S7. For
the ACO (012) slab, the pds is OH*→O* with the free energy change of
1.91 eV. However, the pds of Ag2-ACO (012) surface is O*→OOH* and
possesses the ΔG of 1.83 eV, which is smaller than that of the ACO.
Moreover, the overpotential decreases 0.08 V. The decreased ΔG of the
pds demonstrates that the combination of Ag and ACO enables the
optimization of the ΔG of the pds, suggesting decreased energy barriers
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Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760
of intermediates involved on the Co sites in OER. We also calculated the
partial density of state (pDOS) of the ACO (012) surface and Ag2-ACO
(012) surface, compared to bulk ACO in Fig. S9. The bulk ACO is a
semiconductor with the band gap of 1.22 eV, while the combination of
Ag clusters and AgCoO2 transforms to a metal with zero band gap. It is
mainly contributed by the introducing of s orbital of Ag clusters around
the Fermi level. Moreover, the band decomposed charge density across
Fermi level with the energy window of 0.05 eV is shown in Fig. 4.
Obviously, the Ag2-ACO (012) system has much higher electron density
than that of ACO (012) surface, primarily devoted by Ag2 cluster and
CoO2 layer of surface. It means that Ag2-ACO (012) system owns much
better conductivity, more benefit for electron transfer, which agree with
EIS results.
An efficient and stable electrocatalyst is related to active sites
numbers, species, electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance
[38–40]. And it is known that the number of surface active sites can be
boosted through shrinking particle sizes [41]. Therefore, by mediating
electron transportation ability, nano-transition-metal-based oxides
could be more promising OER catalysts compared with some hydro-
xides, metal phosphides and sulfides due to its excellent stability in
alkaline medium [42]. Our experimental results are in consonance with
these rules. According to the aforementioned discussions, the introdu-
cing of proper metal species enabled the modification of Co 3d pro-
jected electronic states, resulting in optimized delocalized charge den-
sity, improved electrical conductivity and tuned ΔG for OER
intermediate. Importantly, the sample realizes significant improvement
R. Zhang et al. Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760

Fig. 3. a,b) Polarization curves for OER of samples 1 M KOH using disk area for current density. c) Comparison of TOF of the samples at the overpotential of 300 mV.
d) Polarization curves of ACO/Ag, RuO2 and IrO2 in 1 M KOH using ECSA for current density. e) OER polarization curves of ACO/Ag before and after 5000 cycles of
accelerated stability tests. f) EIS spectra for ACO and ACO/Ag recorded in 1 M KOH.

in OER performance, and exhibits superior performance than most re-
ported Co-based oxides OER catalysts (for details, see Table S6).
In summary, we have demonstrated a facile room temperature
method for the synthesis of Co 3d projected state modified ACO through
combining it with Ag. The ACO/Ag exhibits excellent OER activity and
stability in alkaline media. This unique ACO/Ag hybrid nanostructure,
which brings an increased occupied Co 3d projected state, play a fun-
damental role in their superior electrocatalytic activities. DFT
calculations demonstrated that the reduction of unoccupied Co 3d
projected state in the hybrid resulted in optimized delocalized charge
density of ACO and decreased reaction free energy barriers involved on
the Co site in OER, which are essential for determining the over-
potential required under different conditions. This study not only pro-
vides a new mild and quick route for synthesizing of the silver dela-
fossite but describes the significant potential for rational designing
high-performance OER catalysts projected electronic density of states

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R. Zhang et al. Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760

Fig. 4. Standard free energy diagram for OER at zero, equilibrium, and limiting potential: a) for ACO (012) surface with 100% OH terminated; b) for Ag2-ACO (012)
surface with 50% OH and 50% O terminated. The top (up) and side (down) view of charge density around Fermi level 0.05 eV for: c) ACO (012) surface; b) and Ag2-
ACO (012) surface. The iso-surface value of the contour with the yellow color is 0.0001 e/bohr3. The grey, brown, and red color indicate Ag, Co, and O atom,
respectively. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article).

modification, which expands the ways of developing high active no-Ir, Appendix A. Supplementary material
Ru substitute electrocatalysts for water oxidation.
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the
Acknowledgements online version at doi:10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.12.099.

The work was supported by the National Natural Science References

Foundation of China, 51772283, 21571168, the National Key R&D
Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0401801), China Postdoctoral
Science Foundation (2017M61202). The DFT calculations were com-
pleted on the supercomputing system in the Supercomputing Center of
USTC. We thank the staff at the BL08U1A, BL14W1 beamline of
Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) and soft X-ray mag-
netic circular dichroism end station (XMCD) of National Synchrotron
Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in USTC for their kind help during XAFS
measurements. We also thank Anhui Kemi Machinery Technology
Co,.Ltd. for providing 50ml high-pressure stainless steel reactor.
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(2012) 3517–3523. University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He
[31] J. Chen, H. Che, K. Huang, C. Liu, W. Shi, Appl. Catal. B Environ. 192 (2016) is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Material Physics and
134–144. Chemistry at USTC under the supervision of Prof. Qian-
[32] Y. Liu, L. Fang, H. Lu, L. Liu, H. Wang, C. Hu, Catal. Commun. 17 (2012) 200–204. wang Chen. His research interests mainly focus on fabri-
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[39] B.-Q. Li, Z.-J. Xia, B. Zhang, C. Tang, H.-F. Wang, Q. Zhang, Nat. Commun. 8 (2017) Kang Yang received B.S. degree from Shandong University
934. 2015. He is pursuing his Ph.D. degree under the supervision
[40] C. Tang, H.S. Wang, H.F. Wang, Q. Zhang, G.L. Tian, J.Q. Nie, F. Wei, Adv. Mater. of Dr. Qianwang Chen in Hefei National Laboratory for
27 (2015) 4516–4522. Physical Sciences at Microscale Department of Materials
[41] Y. Bai, H. Huang, C. Wang, R. Long, Y. Xiong, Mater. Chem. Front. 1 (2017) Science & Engineering in University of Science and
1951–1964. Technology of China. His research interests include elec-
[42] M. Tahir, L. Pan, F. Idrees, X. Zhang, L. Wang, J.-J. Zou, Z.L. Wang, Nano Energy 37 trocatalytic water splitting, oxygen and nitrogen reduction.
(2017) 136–157.

Ruirui Zhang received his Master degree in 2016 from the

University of Science and Technology of China under the
supervision of Prof. Qianwang Chen. He is currently a re-
search assistant at Chen's Lab. His research interests mainly
focus on nanocatalysis combined with computational si-
mulations.

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R. Zhang et al.
Jing Chen received her BA degree from Anhui University in
2018 and currently she is pursuing her MA at University of
Science and Technology of China (USTC). Her research in-
terests mainly focus on application of nanomaterials in
energy and catalysis.
Shuai Liu received his BS degree in Materials from dalian
university of technology (DUT) in 2012. Now he is a doc-
toral candidate in Hefei National Laboratory for Physical
Sciences at the Microscale under the supervision of Prof.
Qian-wang Chen. His current interests include the electro-
chemical reaction for energy conversion.
Minxue Huang received her bachelor's degree in 2017 in
Metal Material Engineering in Dalian University of
Technology. Now she is a Ph.D. candidate in University of
Science and Technology of China under the supervision of
Prof. Qian-wang Chen. Her research interests focus on
fabrication and application of MOFs for electrocatalysis.
760
Nano Energy 57 (2019) 753–760
Yang Yang received his Ph.D. degree in 2018 under the
supervision of Prof. Qianwang Chen from the University of
Science and Technology of China. He is now a postdoctoral
fellow in the University of Cincinnati. His research interests
mainly focus on the design, synthesis, and applications of
MOFs derived materials for electrocatalysis.
Wenhua Zhang is an associate professor in the department
of Material Science and Engineering at University of
Science and Technology of China (USTC). She received her
BS (2002) from USTC and got double-Ph.Ds. from USTC
(2008) and KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2010). Then
she did postdoctoral research at USTC from 2009 to 2012.
Her research interests focus on computational catalysis.
Based on multi-scale simulation and spectroscopy simula-
tion she works on determining of the active sites of catalyst,
understanding the reaction mechanism at atomic scale and
theoretically designing of new potential catalytic materials.
Professor Qianwang Chen received his Ph.D. from the
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in
1995 and was appointed to the faculty of USTC. He worked
as a postdoc in the Institute of Hydrothermal Chemistry,
Kochi, Japan, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in
the Solar Energy Institute of Hannover, Germany and as a
visiting researcher in the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University. He was appointed as a professor in 2000 at the
USTC and was awarded the Cheung Kong Professorship in
2002 by the Ministry of Education of China. His research
interests include the synthesis and application of nanoscale
materials.