Interface engineering of Fe2P@CoMnP4 heterostructured nanoarrays for efficient and stable overall water splitting

Yifan Zhao; Shuwen Zhao; Ji Chen; Yao Zhou; Peilong Zhao; Ruijie Dai; Weijie Zhou; Peizhi Yang; Hua Zhang; Anran Chen

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.002

Interface engineering of Fe₂P@CoMnP₄ heterostructured nanoarrays for efficient and stable overall water splitting

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Mar:633:897-906. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.002. Epub 2022 Dec 5.

Authors

Yifan Zhao¹, Shuwen Zhao¹, Ji Chen¹, Yao Zhou², Peilong Zhao³, Ruijie Dai¹, Weijie Zhou¹, Peizhi Yang⁴, Hua Zhang⁵, Anran Chen⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, PR China.
² School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, UK. Electronic address: Yao.Zhou@ieee.org.
³ College of Chemistry, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450066, PR China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Advanced Technique & Preparation for Renewable Energy Materials, Ministry of Education, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650092, PR China. Electronic address: pzhyang@hotmail.com.
⁵ School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, PR China. Electronic address: zhanghua1226@mail.ynu.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, PR China. Electronic address: anran@ynu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36508397
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.002

Abstract

Electrocatalytic water splitting to generate high-quality hydrogen is an attractive renewable energy storage technology; however, it is still far from becoming a real-world application. In this study, we developed an effective and stable nickel foam-supported Fe₂P@CoMnP₄ heterostructure electrocatalyst for overall water splitting. As expected, the as-obtained Fe₂P@CoMnP₄/NF electrocatalyst exhibits superb bifunctional catalytic activity and only requires extremely low overpotentials of 53 and 249 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions, respectively. Moreover, a two-electrode electrolyzer assembled using Fe₂P@CoMnP₄/NF as electrodes operates at the low cell voltage of 1.54 V at 10 mA cm^-2, showing excellent long-term stability for 140 h. Theoretical calculations indicate that the surface electronic structure is effectively adjusted by the generated heterointerfaces between the Fe₂P and CoMnP₄ in a two-phase matrix, resulting in a Gibbs free energy of hydrogen adsorption close to zero and high intrinsic activity. This innovative strategy is a valuable route for producing low-cost high-performance bifunctional electrocatalysts for water splitting.

Keywords: Density functional theory; Fe(2)P@CoMnP(4)/NF; Heterostructure; Hydrogen evolution reaction; Oxygen evolution reaction; Water splitting.