Abstract
Non-noble-metal catalysts are the key point for the development of water splitting to produce hydrogen, a process which can be used to overcome the energy crisis. In this paper, we investigated water splitting in alkaline environments using skutterudite-type cobalt phosphide (CoP3) nanoneedle arrays fabricated on carbon cloth. A moderate amount of iron is doped into pristine CoP3, and the resulting Co1−xFexP3 shows a significant enhancement for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) compared with the pristine CoP3. Co0.7Fe0.3P3 displays the best HER performance, with an overpotential of 167 mV vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2 (η10) and a Tafel slope of 65.1 mV dec−1. Co0.7Fe0.3P3 also shows the best OER catalytic performance, reaching a current density of 50 mA cm−2 (η50) at an overpotential of 330 mV vs. RHE. Our results indicate that simple second metal element doping is an effective way to improve the HER and OER performance of skutterudite-type electrocatalysts in alkaline media.
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