Metallic Single-Unit-Cell Orthorhombic Cobalt Diselenide Atomic Layers: Robust Water-Electrolysis Catalysts

The bottleneck in water electrolysis lies in the kinetically sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, conceptually new metallic non‐metal atomic layers are proposed to overcome this drawback. Metallic single‐unit‐cell CoSe2 sheets with an orthorhombic phase are synthesized by thermally exfoliating a lamellar CoSe2‐DETA hybrid. The metallic character of orthorhombic CoSe2 atomic layers, verified by DFT calculations and temperature‐dependent resistivities, allows fast oxygen evolution kinetics with a lowered overpotential of 0.27 V. The single‐unit‐cell thickness means 66.7 % of the Co2+ ions are exposed on the surface and serve as the catalytically active sites. The lowered Co2+ coordination number down to 1.3 and 2.6, gives a lower Tafel slope of 64 mV dec−1 and higher turnover frequency of 745 h−1. Thus, the single‐unit‐cell CoSe2 sheets have around 2 and 4.5 times higher catalytic activity compared with the lamellar CoSe2‐DETA hybrid and bulk CoSe2. The shape of thins to come: Atomic layers bring better catalytic properties as shown by thermally exfoliating a lamellar CoSe2–DETA hybrid to give single‐unit‐cell orthorhombic CoSe2 sheets. The single‐unit‐cell thickness means that 66.7 % of the Co2+ ions are exposed on the surface and are low coordinate leading to a lower Tafel slope and higher turnover frequency in water splitting.