Manipulating the morphology engineering of nickel phosphides to attain enhanced acidic electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Development of inexpensive non-composite nanomaterials contributes to achieve cost-effective scale-up synthesis on the premise of optimizing performance and configuration properly. Here, we focus on the inexpensive single nickel phosphides and achieve HER performance comparable to other reported counterparts with composite structure via well-designed morphology engineering strategy. More importantly, this batch of nickel phosphides also come with a variety of interesting morphologies. The introduction of quantitative ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid tetra-potassium salt (EDTA center dot 4 K) induces a competitive coordination with urea, resulting in a significant transformation of sheet-like spherical Ni2P to high-density rod-like spherical Ni2P with abundant active sites, developed specific surface area, and three-dimensional extended space. Benefiting from above advantages, the rod-like spherical Ni2P only requires overpotential of 166 mV to provide 10 mA cm(-2) in HER, and possesses satisfactory cycling durability. This work promotes the development of low-cost nickel-based materials and is expected to provide guidance for the morphology engineering of other materials.

Automated summary

This study focuses on inexpensive single nickel phosphides and achieved HER performance comparable to other composite structures through morphology engineering strategy. The introduction of EDTA·4K transformed the nickel phosphide morphology, increasing its specific surface area and active site density. The rod-like spherical Ni2P exhibited low overpotential and satisfactory cycling durability in HER.