Enhancement of alkaline water splitting activity by Co-P coating on a copper oxide nanowire.

Abstract

Hydrogen is the most attractive source of energy in the 21st century. However, high-efficiency mass production of hydrogen still faces many challenges. Although electrochemical water splitting is an ideal way to produce hydrogen, it requires low-cost and efficient electrocatalysts. In this work, a hybrid shell/core Co-P/CuO nanowire array was fabricated by Co-P film electrodeposition on a CuO nanowire array. Because of the synergy between Co-P and CuO nanowire arrays, Co-P/CuO shows remarkable activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This bifunctional electrocatalyst achieving 20 mA cm-2 requires a cell voltage of only 1.645 V, and has superb long-term electrochemical stability and high faradaic efficiency.