Hollow Porous Heterometallic Phosphide Nanocubes for Enhanced Electrochemical Water Splitting

Yanna Guo; Jing Tang; Zhongli Wang; Yoshiyuki Sugahara; Yusuke Yamauchi

doi:10.1002/smll.201802442

Hollow Porous Heterometallic Phosphide Nanocubes for Enhanced Electrochemical Water Splitting

Small. 2018 Nov;14(44):e1802442. doi: 10.1002/smll.201802442. Epub 2018 Oct 4.

Authors

Yanna Guo^{1

2}, Jing Tang¹, Zhongli Wang¹, Yoshiyuki Sugahara^{2

3}, Yusuke Yamauchi^{3

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0044, Japan.
² Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan.
³ Kagami Memorial Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology, Waseda University, Nishiwaseda 2, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 169-0051, Japan.
⁴ School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
⁵ Department of Plant and Environmental New Resources, Kyung Hee University, 1732 Deogyeong-daero, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 446-701, South Korea.

PMID: 30286273
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201802442

Abstract

Highly efficient earth-abundant electrocatalysts for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are of great importance for renewable energy conversion systems. Herein, hollow porous heterometallic phosphide nanocubes are developed as a highly active and robust catalyst for electrochemical water splitting via one-step phosphidation of a NiCoFe Prussian blue analogue. Through modulation of the composition of metals in the precursors, the optimal NiCoFeP exhibiting increased electrical conductivity and abundant electrochemically active sites, leading to high electrocatalytic activities and outstanding kinetics for both HER and OER, is successfully obtained. NiCoFeP shows low overpotentials of 273 mV for OER and 131 mV for HER at a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 and quite low Tafel slopes of 35 mV dec^-1 for OER and 56 mV dec^-1 for HER.

Keywords: composition modulation; heterometallic phosphide; hollow structure; hydrogen evolution reaction; oxygen evolution reaction.