Ru doping NiCoP hetero-nanowires with modulated electronic structure for efficient overall water splitting

Jianmei Cen; Pei Kang Shen; Yanfei Zeng

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.028

Ru doping NiCoP hetero-nanowires with modulated electronic structure for efficient overall water splitting

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Mar 15:610:213-220. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.028. Epub 2021 Dec 6.

Authors

Jianmei Cen¹, Pei Kang Shen², Yanfei Zeng¹

Affiliations

¹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Sustainable Energy Materials, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Electrochemical Energy Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center of Sustainable Energy Materials, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Electrochemical Energy Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China. Electronic address: pkshen@gxu.edu.cn.

PMID: 34922077
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.028

Abstract

Herein, a novel Ru-doped bimetal phosphide (Ru-NiCoP) heterostructure electrocatalyst on Ni foam is successfully synthesized through a multi-step hydrothermal reaction, ion exchange, and phosphorization method for efficient overall water splitting in alkaline media. The doping of Ru and P can effectively optimize the electronic structure and expose more active sites. The unique 3D interconnected nanowires not only ensures the uniform distribution of Ru coupled with NiCoP, but also endows the Ru-NiCoP/NF with the large ECSA, the fast electron transport and the favorable reaction kinetics attributes. Benefiting from the compositional and structural advantages, Ru-NiCoP/NF catalyst exhibits significantly enhancedcatalytic activities along with excellent stability, only needing 32.3 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 for HER and 233.8 mV at 50 mA cm^-2 for OER. In particular, when Ru-NiCoP/NF is employed as both cathode and anode electrodes,a small voltage of 1.50 V is required to reach 30 mA cm^-2for overall water splittingwith an impressive stability. This study provides an alternative strategyon the design and development of high performance catalysts foroverall water splittingand other energy conversion fields.

Keywords: Hydrogen evolution reaction; NiCoP; Overall water splitting; Oxygen evolution reaction; Ru.