Fabrication of Fe₂O₃ nanostructure on CNT for oxygen evolution reaction

The carbon-based composite materials prepared through green synthetic approach are attracting greater interest in electrochemical applications due to their sustainable nature. Herein, we developed Fe₂O₃ and Fe₂O₃@CNT composite materials via a green mechanochemical one-pot method. The as prepared composite materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-Ray spectroscopy (EDS), field emission scanning microscopy (FE-SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. Incorporating Fe₂O₃ nanoparticles on CNT surface tunes its electronic structure as well increases active sites and thus enhance the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance. As a result, the fabricated Fe₂O₃@CNT is a highly effective and balanced electrocatalyst that delivers superior current density (j = 10 mA cm⁻²) at low overpotential (η = 270 mV) for OER compared with pristine Fe₂O₃ (η = 290 mV) in 1 M KOH. Further, Fe₂O₃@CNT electrocatalyst shows high long-term durability in 1 M KOH for 100 h, fulfilling all the advantageous viable standards for OER.