Cu2O-templated fabrication of Ni(OH)2·0.75H2O hollow tubes for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction

Cu2O is an ideal template material for the preparation of transition metal hydroxide/oxyhydroxides with oxygen evolution reaction(OER)enhanced catalytic performance.Here,inspired by Pearson's principle,Cu2O wires were prepared and used as a sacrificial template to prepare Ni(OH)2·0.75H2O hollow tubes(Ni(OH)2 HTs)with highly improved surface roughness.Benefiting from unique structural advantages,the Ni(OH)2 HTs showed excellent catalytic activity,rapid kinetics and a long-term stability as the OER catalyst,where an overpotential of only 207 mV was required to drive a current density of 10 mA cm-2,an ideal kinetics with a Tafel slope as 79.8 mV dec-1 was calculated,and no obvious attenuation in chronoamperometry was discovered after operation for 24 h.This paper provides a novel template-assisted strategy to prepare high-performance transition metal-based OER cat-alysts possessing hollow and tubular structures.