EDTA-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of flower-like CoSe_2 nanorods as an efficient electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction

Hydrogen evolution reaction(HER) is a prospective method to generate pure hydrogen. The development of superior electrocatalysts based on earth-abundant materials, plays a critical role in the future.CoSe_2, one of the earth-abundant electrocatalysts, has been proved to be a promising catalyst for hydrogen generation. In our work, flower-like CoSe_2 nanorods with high quality are successfully synthesized through a facile ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid ligand(EDTA)-assisted hydrothermal process. The flower-like CoSe_2 nanorods show the brilliant electrochemical HER performance with 100 mA cm^(-2) at overpotential of 273 m V, a small Tafel slope of 35 mV dec^(-1) and strong durability in acid solution. The sparkly HER catalytic activity of CoSe_2 can be ascribed to its particular structure with large surface area and abundant active sites. Therefore, this work offers an outstanding candidate for improving hydrogen production capabilities by water electrolysis.