Abstract
Hydrogen (H2) is widely acknowledged as a promising, sustainable, and environmentally friendly energy carrier, offering numerous environmental benefits over conventional fossil fuels. However, the advancement of this technology is severely hindered by the scarcity of effective and robust catalysts for hydrogen evolution (HER) and oxygen evolution (OER) reactions activity. This study marks the inaugural fabrication of a hybrid tri-metallic electrocatalyst, termed MnCoCu–P, through hydrothermal synthesis. Subsequently, the catalyst undergoes atmospheric O2 plasma surface activation, aiming to amplify the efficiency of water splitting. The novel atmospheric O2 plasma-activated MnCoCu–P electrode outperforms the reported classic metal phosphides, and it outperformed the compared commercial Pt/C and RuO2 benchmark catalysts with outstanding performances of 0.488 and 1.20 V towards HER and OER at 1000 mA/cm2, respectively. Additionally, the MnCoCu–P (5 min) catalyst Faradic efficiency was calculated under alkaline conditions in 1.0 M KOH, and both the produced gas H2 and O2 match the theoretical and experimental calculated values well, indicating a high efficiency of almost 100%. In the 2-E system, MnCoCu–P (5 min)‖MnCoCu–P (5 min) demonstrated remarkable performance by attaining a current density of 1000 mA/cm2 at low total cell voltages of 1.93 V and outperforming the benchmark Pt/C‖RuO2 electrode system. On the other hand, the MnCoCu–P electrode possesses excellent activity under industrial conditions at 6.0 M @ 60 °C exhibited 1.89 V at 1000 mA/cm2 and performs well in natural water systems. Moreover, the 5 min O2 plasma-treated MnCoCu–P‖MnCoCu–P electrodes showed improved activity in all the pH solutions which makes it one of the potential candidates for commercial application in the future.
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