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Al-Doped CoP nanoarray: a durable water-splitting electrocatalyst with superhigh activity

2017; Royal Society of Chemistry; Volume: 9; Issue: 14 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1039/c7nr00740j

2040-3372

Rong Zhang, Chun Tang, Rongmei Kong, Gu Du, Abdullah M. Asiri, Liang Chen, Xuping Sun,

Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques

The scalable production of hydrogen fuel through electrochemical water reduction needs efficient Earth-abundant electrocatalysts to make the whole water-splitting process more energy efficient. In this Article, we report that an Al-doped CoP nanoarray on carbon cloth (Al-CoP/CC) behaves as a durable hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst with superhigh activity in 0.5 M H2SO4. It demands a pretty low overpotential of 23 mV to drive a geometrical catalytic current density of 10 mA cm−2, outperforming all reported non-precious metal catalysts. Density functional theory calculations reveal that Al-CoP has a more thermo-neutral hydrogen adsorption free energy than CoP. Notably, this Al-CoP/CC is also superior in activity and durability as a bifunctional catalyst for alkaline water electrolysis, and its two-electrode water electrolyser delivers 10 mA cm−2 water-splitting current at a cell voltage of 1.56 V in 1.0 M KOH. This work offers us an attractive cost-effective catalyst electrode in water-splitting devices for large-scale production of hydrogen fuels.