Bimetallic phosphide nanoparticles embedded in carbon nanostrips for electrocatalytic water oxidation

The development of low-cost and stable catalysts to enhance the electrocatalytic performance of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has long been a concern. Herein, the rational synthesis of bimetallic phosphide nanoparticles anchored onto N-doped carbon of CoNiP/NC-X (X = 1, 2, 3 represent the molar ratio between Co and Ni of 1:1, 1:2, 2:1 in crystalline precursors, respectively) nanocomposites as high-performance electrocatalysts, which are calcined from a series of Co/Ni-based isostructural coordination polymers as the precursors. After pyrolysis, the as-obtained CoNiP/NC-1 nanostrips are intrinsically endowed with favorable nanostructure, large specific surface area, suitable heteroatom doping, abundant catalytic active sites and highly graphitic carbon network. Therefore, it exhibits a decent quasi-4-electron OER performance with a small overpotential of 330 mV at 10 mA cm−2, a low Tafel slope of 80.5 mV dec−1 and a 94.27% current retention after 10 hours in alkaline solution. The hierarchical nanostructures of CoNiP/NC-X series and their positive response to electrocatalytic properties have shed light on the preparation of other non-noble metal based carbon nanomaterials for efficient energy-related applications.