Interface Engineering of CoP3/Ni2P for Boosting the Wide pH Range Water-Splitting Activity

Junyu Zhang; Hongyu Zhou; Yan Liu; Jiupeng Zhang; Yuhuan Cui; Jianchen Li; Jianshe Lian; Guoyong Wang; Qing Jiang

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c14685

Interface Engineering of CoP₃/Ni₂P for Boosting the Wide pH Range Water-Splitting Activity

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Nov 10;13(44):52598-52609. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c14685. Epub 2021 Oct 27.

Authors

Junyu Zhang¹, Hongyu Zhou¹, Yan Liu², Jiupeng Zhang¹, Yuhuan Cui¹, Jianchen Li¹, Jianshe Lian¹, Guoyong Wang¹, Qing Jiang¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130025, PR China.
² Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering (Ministry of Education) and State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, PR China.

PMID: 34705420
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c14685

Abstract

Developing electrocatalysts with low price, high energy efficiency, and universal pH value for hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction (HER and OER) is very important for the wide application of electrochemical water splitting in hydrogen production. The results of density functional theory show that the interface region of CoP₃/Ni₂P heterostructures can significantly boost all of the catalytic performances. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to confirm the abundant structural defects and the corresponding adjustment of the electronic state, thus ameliorating the activation energy, conductivity, and active area of the catalyst. Benefiting from these, CoP₃/Ni₂P heterostructures exhibit superior performance of both HER and OER in a wide pH range. CoP₃/Ni₂P can also be used for water splitting (1.557 V at 10 mA cm^-2) more than 40 h, superior to benchmark pairs of Pt/C and RuO₂ on Ni foam.

Keywords: carbon neutrality; density-function theory; hydrogen evolution reaction; metal phosphides; oxygen evolution reaction.