Oxygen vacancies and V co-doped Co₃O₄ prepared by ion implantation boosts oxygen evolution catalysis

Introducing heteroatoms and defects is a significant strategy to improve oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance of electrocatalysts. However, the synergistic interaction of the heteroatom and defect still needs further investigations. Herein, we demonstrated an oxygen vacancy-rich vanadium-doped Co₃O₄ (V-O_v-Co₃O₄), fabricated by V-ion implantation, could be used for high-efficient OER catalysis. X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that the charge density of Co atom increased, and the reaction barrier of reaction pathway from O^* to HOO^* decreased. V-O_v-Co₃O₄ catalyst shows a low overpotential of 329 mV to maintain current density of 10 mA·cm^-2, and a small Tafel slope of 74.5 mV·dec^-1. This modification provides us with valuable perception for future design of heteroatom-doped and defect-based electrocatalysts.