Facile synthesis of MoP-Ru2P on porous N, P co-doped carbon for efficiently electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction in full pH range

Developing efficient, novel and pH-universal electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a challenging and meaningful task for the large-scale and practical hydrogen application via electrocatalytic overall water-splitting. Herein, we propose one-pot strategy to prepare MoP and Ru2P nanoparticles supported on N, P co-doped carbon (MoP-Ru2P/NPC) with porous nanostructures. Benefiting from overly specific characters, the synthetical MoP-Ru2P/NPC displays low overpotentials of 47 mV, 126 mV and 82 mV to obtain 10 mA cm-2 in alkaline, neutral and acid electrolytes as well as remarkable stability. Moreover, a low cell voltage (1.49 V) is required to spur 10 mA cm-2 for full water-splitting in 1 M KOH with the MoP-Ru2P/NPC and commercial NiFe foam as the cathode and anode, respectively. Remarkably, the intermittent sustainable energies, including wind, solar and thermal energies, can drive hydrogen generation directly and then stored them accordingly.

Automated summary

The MoP-Ru2P/NPC electrocatalyst synthesized by a one-pot strategy exhibits porous nanostructures and shows low overpotentials in electrolytes of different pH values with remarkable stability. In 1 M KOH, this catalyst as the cathode and commercial NiFe foam as the anode achieves complete water-splitting for hydrogen generation with a low cell voltage requirement.