Facile synthesis of tubular CoP as a high efficient electrocatalyst for pH-universal hydrogen evolution

Abstract

A facile three-step approach for tubular CoP preparation and its catalytic activity for HER and OER are reported. The CoP microtubes show superior HER performance in a wide pH range with low overpotentials of 91, 101 and 113 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4, 1 M KOH and 1 M PBS, respectively. Additionally, it also depicts superior OER performance with an overpotential of 300 mV at 10 mA cm−2, which is lower than reported precious metal oxides. The improved electrocatalytic performance of tubular CoP is likely attributed to the porous tube-like structural features, which not only afford rich exposed active sites, but also accelerate the charge or mass transfer efficiency, and thus efficiently promote the HER performance. The synthesis of tubular CoP confirms the importance of morphology features and provides a new insight to rationally design and synthesize highly effective non-noble metal phosphide-based pH-universal electrocatalysts for HER.