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Hierarchical CoP Nanostructures on Nickel Foam as Efficient Bifunctional Catalysts for Water Splitting
Author(s) -
Cao Hongshuai,
Li Zhibin,
Xie Ying,
Xiao Fang,
Wang Honglei,
Wang Xiaoyan,
Pan Kai,
Cabot Andreu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
chemsuschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.412
H-Index - 157
eISSN - 1864-564X
pISSN - 1864-5631
DOI - 10.1002/cssc.202002624
Subject(s) - water splitting , catalysis , bifunctional , oxygen evolution , electrocatalyst , nickel , hydrogen production , chemical engineering , materials science , bifunctional catalyst , hydrogen , hydrothermal circulation , nanostructure , nanotechnology , electrode , electrochemistry , chemistry , metallurgy , organic chemistry , photocatalysis , engineering
A highly active and cheap catalyst is also key to hydrogen production by water splitting. However, most of the high‐efficiency catalysts reported to date only are catalytically active for either the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) or the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which makes the development of multifunctional catalysts more meaningful. Here, for the first time, Co(CO 3 ) 0.5 OH . 0.11 H 2 O (CHCH) as precursor with different microstructures on the surface of nickel foam (NF) was obtained using a facile hydrothermal method. The CoP/NF catalyst was obtained after thermal phosphating that retained the microhierarchical structure of the precursor and greatly improved the catalytic performance, with a highly efficiency performance as HER and OER dual‐functional catalyst. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed that the possible reason for the excellent performance of the CoP/NF layered structure is an increase in the number of of surface defects and an increased active surface area. The results reported in this paper show that CoP/NF, a layered bifunctional electrocatalyst, is a cost‐effective and efficient water‐splitting electrode. This finding can offer the opportunity for the commercial use of excess electric energy for large‐scale water splitting hydrogen production.