- Lu, Bingzhang;
- Liu, Qiming;
- Wang, Chunyang;
- Masood, Zaheer;
- Morris, David J;
- Nichols, Forrest;
- Mercado, Rene;
- Zhang, Peng;
- Ge, Qingfeng;
- Xin, Huolin L;
- Chen, Shaowei
Carbon-supported nanocomposites are attracting particular attention as high-performance, low-cost electrocatalysts for electrochemical water splitting. These are mostly prepared by pyrolysis and hydrothermal procedures that are time-consuming (from hours to days) and typically difficult to produce a nonequilibrium phase. Herein, for the first time ever, we exploit magnetic induction heating-quenching for ultrafast production of carbon-FeNi spinel oxide nanocomposites (within seconds), which exhibit an unprecedentedly high performance towards oxygen evolution reaction (OER), with an ultralow overpotential of only +260 mV to reach the high current density of 100 mA cm-2. Experimental and theoretical studies show that the rapid heating and quenching process (ca. 103 K s-1) impedes the Ni and Fe phase segregation and produces a Cl-rich surface, both contributing to the remarkable catalytic activity. Results from this study highlight the unique advantage of ultrafast heating/quenching in the structural engineering of functional nanocomposites to achieve high electrocatalytic performance towards important electrochemical reactions.