General Strategy for Preparation of Porous Nickel Phosphide Nanosheets on Arbitrary Substrates toward Efficient Hydrogen Generation

Abstract

Nickel phosphides have been widely explored for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) due to their high activity and durability. To date, however, it is still a big challenge to develop facile and scalable approaches to preparing nickel phosphide structures with high HER performance for practical applications. Here, a general strategy is demonstrated for facile preparation of porous nickel phosphide nanosheets on arbitrary substrates by electroless Ni plating on the substrate followed by a convenient and stable phosphidation reaction. Typical porous nickel phosphide nanosheets (Ni5P4/NiP2/Ni2P) supported on carbon cloth show excellent electrocatalytic HER activities in acidic electrolyte with very small overpotentials of 63 mV and 120 mV to attain current densities of 10 mA cm–2 and 100 mA cm–2, respectively, and a very low Tafel slope of 47.3 mV dec–1, which are among the best results compared to other non-noble HER electrocatalysts. Furthermore, the electrode exhibits superior flexibility a...