Sea Urchin-Like MOF-Derived Formation of Porous Cu3P@C as an Efficient and Stable Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution and Hydrogen Evolution Reactions

Owning to the energy crisis and environmental pollution, it is urgent to develop an efficient and earth-abundant electrocatalyst for water splitting. In this work, the Cu2O cubes are first synthesized through a modified precipitation method, and it is subsequently selected as the Cu2+ source to synthesize 3D MOF (metal-organic framework, Cu-BDC) nanoarray by a facile and efficient bottom-up method. Next, porous Cu3P@C is prepared via the low-temperature phosphorization of 3D Cu-BDC nanoarray as a high-performance electrocatalyst for oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions (OER and HER). In particular, the effect of reaction temperature on the morphology of 3D Cu-BDC precursor is studied in detail. Experimental results reveal that Cu3P@C-120 derived from sea urchin-like Cu-BDC exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance owning to the high special surface area, developed porous structure, and the uniform dispersion of Cu3P nanoparticles, which affords the current density of 10 mA cm(-2) at low overpotentials of 300 and 124 mV for OER (alkaline medium) and HER (acidic medium) with Tafel slopes of 24 and 29 mV dec(-1), respectively. Remarkably, Cu3P@C-120 also exhibits an excellent durability for OER and HER, making it an efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for application in the production of clean hydrogen fuel.