title: Highly Efficient and Robust Nickel Phosphides as Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Overall Water-Splitting.
abstract: To search for the efficient non-noble metal based and/or earth-abundant electrocatalysts for overall water-splitting is critical to promote the clean-energy technologies for hydrogen economy. Herein, we report nickel phosphide (NixPy) catalysts with the controllable phases as the efficient bifunctional catalysts for water electrolysis. The phases of NixPy were determined by the temperatures of the solid-phase reaction between the ultrathin Ni(OH)2 plates and NaH2PO2·H2O. The NixPy with the richest Ni5P4 phase synthesized at 325 °C (NixPy-325) delivered efficient and robust catalytic performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in the electrolytes with a wide pH range. The NixPy-325 catalysts also exhibited a remarkable performance for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in a strong alkaline electrolyte (1.0 M KOH) due to the formation of surface NiOOH species. Furthermore, the bifunctional NixPy-325 catalysts enabled a highly performed overall water-splitting with ∼100% Faradaic efficiency in 1.0 M KOH electrolyte, in which a low applied external potential of 1.57 V led to a stabilized catalytic current density of 10 mA/cm(2) over 60 h.
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Jiayuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Xuemei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Zhaoming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Yuanyuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Center for Applied Chemical Research, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, and State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.|MOE Key Laboratory for Nonequilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Yongquan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qu
keywords: bifunctional catalysts; electrocatalysis; hydrogen evolution reaction; nickel phosphide; overall water-splitting