Interface engineering of porous Fe2P-WO2.92 catalyst with oxygen vacancies for highly active and stable large-current oxygen evolution and overall water splitting

Abstract

Constructing a low cost, and high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst is of great significance for improving the performance of alkaline electrolyzer, which is still suffering from high-energy consumption. Herein, we created a porous iron phosphide and tungsten oxide self-supporting electrocatalyst with oxygen-containing vacancies on foam nickel (Fe2P-WO2.92/NF) through a facile in-situ growth, etching and phosphating strategies. The sequence-controllable strategy will not only generate oxygen vacancies and improve the charge transfer between Fe2P and WO2.92 components, but also improve the catalyst porosity and expose more active sites. Electrochemical studies illustrate that the Fe2P-WO2.92/NF catalyst presents good OER activity with a low overpotential of 267 mV at 100 mA cm−2, a small Tafel slope of 46.3 mV dec−1, high electrical conductivity, and reliable stability at high current density (100 mA cm−2 for over 60 h in 1.0 M KOH solution). Most significantly, the operating cell voltage of Fe2P-WO2.92/NF || Pt/C is as low as 1.90 V at 400 mA cm−2 in alkaline condition, which is one of the lowest reported in the literature. The electrocatalytic mechanism shows that the oxygen vacancies and the synergy between Fe2P and WO2.92 can adjust the electronic structure and provide more reaction sites, thereby synergistically increasing OER activity. This work provides a feasible strategy to fabricate high-efficiency and stable non-noble metal OER electrocatalysts on the engineering interface.