Carbon-encapsulated Co2P/P-modified NiMoO4 hierarchical heterojunction as superior pH-universal electrocatalyst for hydrogen production

Dongmei Feng; Xiang-Yang Liu; Runze Ye; Weixia Huang; Yun Tong

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.068

Carbon-encapsulated Co₂P/P-modified NiMoO₄ hierarchical heterojunction as superior pH-universal electrocatalyst for hydrogen production

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Mar 15:634:693-702. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.068. Epub 2022 Dec 19.

Authors

Dongmei Feng¹, Xiang-Yang Liu², Runze Ye¹, Weixia Huang¹, Yun Tong³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Surface & Interface Science of Polymer Materials of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
² College of Chemistry and Material Science, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610068, China. Electronic address: xiangyangliu@sicnu.edu.cn.
³ Department of Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Surface & Interface Science of Polymer Materials of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China. Electronic address: tongyun@mail.ustc.edu.cn.

PMID: 36563426
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.068

Abstract

The development of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) technology that operates stably in a wide potential of hydrogen (pH) range of electrolytes is particular important for large-scale hydrogen production. However, the rational design of low-cost and pH-universal electrocatalyst with high catalytic performance remains a huge challenge. Herein, Co₂P nanoparticles strongly coupled with P-modified NiMoO₄ nanorods are directly grown on nickel foam (NF) substrates through carbon layer encapsulation (denoted as C-Co₂P@P-NiMoO₄/NF) by hydrothermal, deposition, and phosphating processes. This novel kind of hierarchical heterojunction has abundant heterogeneous interfaces, strong electronic interactions, and optimized reaction kinetics, representing the highly-active pH-universal electrodes for HER. Remarkably, the C-Co₂P@P-NiMoO₄/NF catalyst shows excellent HER properties in acidic and basic electrolytes, where the overpotentials of 105 mV and 107 mV are applied to drive the current density of 100 mA cm^-2. In addition, a low overpotential of 177 mV at 100 mA cm^-2 along with high stability is realized in 1 M phosphate buffer solution (PBS), which is close to the state-of-the-art non-precious metal electrocatalysts. Our work not only provides a class of robust pH-universal electrocatalyst but also offers a novel way for the rational design of other heterogeneous materials bythe interface regulation strategy.

Keywords: Carbon encapsulated; Cobalt phosphide; Hierarchical heterojunction; Hydrogen production; pH-universal.