Amorphous materials
are used in multitude of catalytic
applications,
including electrocatalytic water-splitting. Identification and investigation
of active sites in amorphous catalysts are rarely reported, mainly
owing to the complexity of the systems. Herein, we report an amorphous
bifunctional Co–W–B electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution
reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The optimized
Co–W–B catalyst showed promising overpotential values
of 97 mV (HER) and 292 mV (OER), respectively, to achieve 10 mA cm–2 in 1 M KOH, with good stability. The promoting effect
of W in Co–B was investigated experimentally, while computational
tools were used to identify all the possible catalytic sites in an
amorphous Co–W–B model and classify the most preferred
sites for HER and OER. The presence of multi-catalytic sites with
specific selectivity toward HER and OER was observed, which explained
the bifunctional activity of Co–W–B. This study will
foster better understanding of the origin of catalytic activity in
similar amorphous systems.
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