Various strategies to tune the electrocatalytic performance of molybdenum phosphide supported on reduced graphene oxide for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

Investigation of non-precious, highly-active and durable catalysts is an essential criteria for the development of electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this work, reduced graphene oxide coupled with molybdenum phosphide (MoP-RGO) is prepared through a facile and scalable one-step strategy. Three strategies are developed to tune the electrocatalytic performance of MoP-RGO including optimize the pyrolysis temperature, add NaCl template and introduction of sulfur atoms. After the optimization, the overpotentials at 10 mA cm−2 reduced from 238 to 152 mV (alkaline electrolyte) and 232 to 144 mV (acid medium), respectively. This work mainly focus on exploiting various strategies to tune the electrocatalytic performance of non-precious catalysts for HER which can provide multiple avenues to develop efficient electrocatalysts.