Nanoarchitectonics of uniformly distributed noble-metal-free CoP in g-C3N4 via in-situ fabrication for enhanced photocatalytic and electrocatalytic hydrogen production

Developing an efficient, robust and low-budget bifunctional material for hydrogen evolution is a daunting challenge, which has attracted plenty of researchers’ interest. Herein, we report the non-noble metal bifunctional g-C3N4/CN/CoP catalysts in situ formed for both photocatalytic and electrocatalytic hydrogen production through a convenient phosphorization process. It was found that the optimal g-C3N4(90)/CN300/CoP3 composite not only had the best photocatalytic hydrogen production rate (29.78 mmol·g−1·h−1) in the dye sensitization system, but also had an excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity, with an overpotential of 221 mV at 10 mA·cm−2. The XRD, FT-IR, TG, et al. confirm the close contact between ZIF-Co and g-C3N4 in the ideal g-C3N4/ZIF-Co precursor could expediently achieve the uniformly distributed CoP to accelerate electron transfer and reduce the recombination rate of charge. This work can provide a novel strategy to fabricate non-noble metal dual-functional materials for photocatalytic and electrocatalytic hydrogen production to solve energy crises and environmental further.