Phosphorus‐Based Electrocatalysts: Black Phosphorus, Metal Phosphides, and Phosphates

Abstract

AbstractEnormous progresses have been made in developing advanced energy conversion and storage technologies, which inevitably require high‐performance electrocatalysts. Recently, phosphorus (P)‐based materials have drawn tremendous attention as a class of promising electrocatalysts and presented intrinsic electrochemical activity and widely tunable property. In a timely response to the ongoing interests, issues faced in P‐based inorganic materials, and the approaches to address them in relation to energy conversion reactions, including hydrogen evolution reaction, oxygen evolution reaction, and oxygen reduction reaction are investigated. The emphasis is focused on the key strategies to modulate black phosphorus, metal phosphides, and phosphates‐based electrocatalysts, although it is impossible to include all possible P‐compounds. The strategies are analyzed and discussed in four aspects, namely, morphological engineering, tuning in crystallinity, compositional tailoring, and material hybridization. They are aimed to modulate the key parameters involved in electrocatalysis, such as the adsorption energy, and density of the active sites, electrical conductivity, and durability of these P‐based inorganic electrocatalysts. With the thorough understandings established for the rational design of the efficient electrocatalysts, the challenges and perspectives in the future development of these high‐performance P‐based systems are briefly looked into.