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

• DOI: 10.1039/c7nr00740j
• Publication Date: 2017-03-09T07:53:59Z
• Authors: Rong Zhang; Chun Tang; Rongmei Kong; Gu Du; Abdullah M. Asiri; Liang Chen; Xuping Sun
• Keywords: Overpotential; Electrolysis of water; Reversible hydrogen electrode

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 evolution electrocatalyst with superhigh activity in 0.5 M H2SO4. It demands pretty low overpotential 23 mV drive geometrical catalytic current density 10 mA cm−2, outperforming all reported non-precious metal catalysts. Density functional theory calculations reveal Al-CoP has thermo-neutral adsorption free than CoP. Notably, Al-CoP/CC is also superior and durability bifunctional catalyst for alkaline electrolysis, its two-electrode electrolyser delivers cm−2 at cell voltage 1.56 V 1.0 KOH. This work offers us attractive cost-effective electrode devices large-scale fuels.