Engineering of sugarcane bagasse based porous carbon nanofiber-supported the CoP/Co2P heterostructure for efficient overall water splitting

ABSTRACT The carbon nanofiber (CNF) is a promising material for fabricating an electrochemical catalyst. However, the CNF derived from petroleum-based polymers with poor specific surface area hinder the exposure of the catalytic active sites. Herein, we develop an efficient catalyst derived from sugarcane bagasse based porous carbon nanofiber-supported the CoP/Co2P heterostructure (CoP/Co2P@ACNF-800) for overall water splitting. The CoP/Co2P@ACNF-800 possessed abundant accessible specific surface area due to its porous carbon structure. Owing to the fast mass and charge transport pathway and exposure of abundant catalytic active sites, the CoP/Co2P@ACNF-800 exhibited high activity with the low overpotential of 155 and 291 mV for the hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions in 1 M KOH at 10 mA cm−2, as well as excellent catalytic stability. When the CoP/Co2P@ACNF-800 worked as both the anode and cathode, the current density of 10 mA•cm−2 could be achieved with a potential of 1.67 V for water splitting. This study provides a strategy to design a novel CoP/Co2P heterostructure supported on renewable biomass-based porous CNFs for efficient electrocatalysis water splitting and sustainable chemistry application.