A Cobalt-Based Amorphous Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Water-Splitting Evolved from a Single-Source Lazulite Cobalt Phosphate

Over the years, cobalt phosphates (amorphous or crystalline) have been projected as one of the most significant and promising classes of nonprecious catalysts and studied exclusively for the electrocatalytic and photocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, their successful utilization of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the reaction of overall water-splitting is rather unexplored. Herein, presented is a crystalline cobalt phosphate, Co-3(OH)(2)(HPO4)(2), structurally related to the mineral lazulite, as an efficient precatalyst for OER, HER, and water electrolysis in alkaline media. During both electrochemical OER and HER, the Co-3(OH)(2)(HPO4)(2) nanostructure was completely transformed in situ into porous amorphous CoOx(OH) films that mediate efficient OER and HER with extremely low overpotentials of only 182 and 87 mV, respectively, at a current density of 10 mA cm(-2). When assemble as anode and cathode in a two-electrode alkaline electrolyzer, unceasing durability over 10 days is achieved with a final cell voltage of 1.54 V, which is superior to the recently reported effective bifunctional electrocatalysts. The strategy to achieve more active sites for oxygen and hydrogen generation via in situ oxidation or reduction from a well-defined inorganic material provides an opportunity to develop cost-effective and efficient electrocatalysts for renewable energy technologies.