It is urgent to explore
cost-effective, high-efficiency, and durable
electrocatalysts for electrochemical water splitting due to the rapidly
increasing energy consumption. In this work, we successfully synthesize
Ca-doped CuCoO2 nanosheets (CCCO-P NSs) with different
Ca2+ dopants (such as 3, 5, and 10 atom %) by a surfactant-modified
hydrothermal reaction with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) addition. The
oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performances of these CCCO-P NSs in
1.0 M KOH are investigated. An optimal nickel foam supported CCCO-P2
NSs (Ni@CCCO-P2, 5 atom % Ca-doped) electrode requires low overpotential
of 470 mV to afford the current density of 10 mA cm–2 and small Tafel slope of 96.5 mV dec–1. Furthermore,
the Ni@CCCO-P2 electrode displays outstanding long-term stability
during the galvanostatic OER electrolysis for 18 h with a little degradation
of 32 mV. The improvement of OER performances for CCCO-P2 NSs could
be attributed to their higher active surface area, more active sites
(Co vacancies defect and Co3+/Co4+ redox pairs),
and higher electrical conductivity. This work highlights the joint
effect of surfactant and Ca doping for preparing CuCoO2 with nanosheet-like morphology and porous crystal structure, which
is favorable for enhancing their OER performance.