Bifunctional sulfur-doped cobalt phosphide electrocatalyst outperforms all-noble-metal electrocatalysts in alkaline electrolyzer for overall water splitting

By M. Anjum, M. Okyay, Minkyung Kim, M. H. Lee, N. Park, J. S. Lee. Nano Energy, 2018

210 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Sulfur-doped CoP (S:CoP) nanoparticles are synthesized as a noble metal-free electrocatalyst via a novel and eco-friendly thiourea-phosphate-assisted solvothermal route. When used as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions from water splitting in an alkaline solution, the electrode exhibits excellent activity and stability outperforming noble mental-based Pt/C, IrO2, and reported non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts. Density functional theory calculations indicate that the excellent performance is attributable to the improved charge-transfer characteristics of the S:CoP nanoparticles owing to their modified electronic structure. It also increases the number of exposed active sites especially on the conductive substrates. A bifunctional S:CoP catalyst-based alkaline electrolyzer for overall water splitting exhibits a stable current density of 100 mA/cm2 at an overvoltage of 0.55 V during a long-term operation; this performance is superior to that obtained from all-noble metal electrolyzer with a Pt/C cathode and an IrO2 anode.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e4d06b4a12135b4875b59e0c5c110b165ae9e7b0