Constructing electrocatalysts with plentiful active sites, great mass transfer ability, and high electrical conductivity is critical to realize efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Hierarchically porous cobalt phosphide/N-doped nanotubular carbon networks (CoP/NCNs) that have all the features were fabricated in this work. For the fabrication, the polymeric worm-like micelles (PWs) with a large aspect ratio were coated by a uniform nanolayer of Zn-Co zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (Zn-Co-ZIFs) on their surface, resulting in the hybrid nanofibers PWs@Zn-Co-ZIFs (HPWs). Inheriting the randomly curved and entanglement properity of PWs, the rigid HPWs formed hybrid networks with the packing voids sized tens to 200 nm. Then, the hybrid networks were treated by pyrolysis-oxidation-phosphidation and ZnO-removal processes, leading to the hierarchically porous CoP/NCNs. In the CoP/NCNs, there are plentiful CoP nanoparticles embedded on the surface of conductive carbon network and fully exposed. When used for HER electrocatalyst, the CoP/NCNs only need small overpotentials (98 and 118 mV in acid and alkaline electrolyte) at 10 mA cm-2. This novel strategy is instructive for tailoring hierarchically porous transition metal phosphide/carbon nanocomposites as promising electrocatalysts.
Keywords: CoP/carbon networks; Electrocatalyst; Hierarchical porosity; Hydrogen evolution reaction; Worm-like micelle.
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