Assembly of Cobalt Layered Double Hydroxide on Cuprous Phosphide Nanowire with Strong Built‐In Potential for Accelerated Overall Water Splitting

Abstract

evolution reaction (HER) and anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) require abundant, cheap, stable, and efficient electrocatalysts. In the past years, huge efforts have been devoted to the development of low-cost electrocatalysts based on transition metals. In general, transition metals, [4] and their nitrides, [5] phosphides, [6] and sulfides, [7] exhibit effective catalytic activity for HER in pH-universal electrolytes, while metallic oxides, [8] and hydroxides, [9] are predominantly alkaline OER electrocatalysts. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to integrate HER and OER in a common electrolyzer due to that most OER electrocatalysts are inactive or corroded in acid media. [10] In this regard, it is crucial to develop cost-effective bifunctional electrocatalysts toward both HER and OER in alkaline media. Up to date, numerous bifunctional electrocatalysts composed of two or more active components have been designed and prepared via interfacial engineering, such as metal-semiconductor Mott-Schottky heterojunctions, [11] heterogeneous sulfides, [12] and phosphides hybrids. [13] These heterogeneous electrocatalysts usually possess the advantages of each component and exhibit vastly improved electrocatalytic performance because of the modified electronic structure in the vicinity of interfaces.Whereas, how to design and synthesize heterogeneous bifunctional electrocatalysts is still lacking systematic reports. Recently, it has been demonstrated that n-type semiconductor catalysts favor cathodic HER and p-type ones prefer anodic OER. [14] On account of this view, it is envisaged that integrating an n-type semiconductor and a p-type one would bring about bifunctional HER and OER electrocatalyst. As is well known, upon intimate contact of p-type and n-type semiconductors to form p-n junction, their Fermi levels turn to be aligned, leading to the formation of the opposite space-charge region at the interface. [15] This changed electronic structure has a great influence on the absorption of target ions and the charge transfer during electrochemical reactions. [16] Specifically, the positively charged n-type side is in favor of the absorption of OH − ions to facilitate OER. [17] Though it has been concluded that the enriched electron density on a metal surface could lead to the stabilization of adsorbed hydrogen for enhanced HER, [18] how the negatively charged p-type side affects HER is still unknown. Heterostructure plays an important role in boostingthe overall water splitting (OWS) performance of nonprecious metal electrocatalysts. However, rational design and synthesis of semiconductor heterojunctions especially for Cu-based ones as efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) still face challenges, and the in-depth study of catalytic mechanisms is urgently needed. Herein, n-type cobalt layered double hydroxide nanosheets are assembled on p-type cuprous phosphide nanowire to form p-n junction. This heterostructure with a strong built-in potent...

Rational Regulation of Crystalline/Amorphous Microprisms‐Nanochannels Based on Molecular Sieve (VSB‐5) for Electrochemical Overall Water Splitting

“…[ 37,38 ] What is more, the overlap of the lattice fringes of Ni(OH) 2 and Ni(PO 3 ) 2 evidently indicates the atomic coupling, verifying the strong interaction between Ni(OH) 2 and Ni(PO 3 ) 2 . [ 39 ] The high‐angle annular dark‐field (HAADF) image and the corresponding EDS element mapping of VSB/NiPO in Figure 1g manifest the homogeneous distributions of Ni, O, and P. The detailed TEM analysis of Ni(PO 3 ) 2 and Ni(OH) 2 can be found in Figures S6 and S7, Supporting Information.…”

Construction of Ru/FeCoP heterointerface to drive dual active site mechanism for efficient overall water splitting

“…However, specially, the peak intensity was slightly reduced and the peak width was slightly broadened compared with that before, which is mainly due to the surface reconstruction of Ru@FeCoP during the OER process to form Fe-O (or Fe-OOH) and Co-O (or Co-OOH) species with OER activity, but their content was too low to be monitored. 63 Unlike the HER, the XPS spectrum (Fig. S23 †) aer the OER test shows that the oxidation peaks of Fe and Co were enhanced dramatically, while the peaks belonging to phosphide were sharply reduced.…”

Electrochemical preparation of nano/micron structure transition metal-based catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction

“…To date, various transition metal-based OER electrocatalysts for electrochemical synthesis have been evaluated with different OER performances (Table 1). 1,11,20,34,74,84,90,92,99–101,106,108,117,118,125,144,151,155,160,163,165,166,176,178,179,181–208 Since transition metal-based metals and alloys cannot survive when placed directly in harsh acidic and alkaline media, they usually need to be stabilized by hosts (such as carbon materials) or saturated with high electronegative elements. Transition-metal oxides and (oxy)hydroxides have been widely studied, and they exhibit considerable OER catalytic performance and are considered to be a group of promising candidates for OER electrocatalysts.…”