Noble Metal Nanoparticles Anchored on Transition Metal Phosphides for Effective pH‐Universal Hydrogen Evolution

Constructing electrocatalysts with high activity and low precious metal content is essential for achieving efficient hydrogen production in pH-universal overall water splitting. Herein, five types of noble metal anchored transition metal phosphides are analyzed by theoretical derivation. Based on the calculation results, a suitable hybrid is screened out of Pt nanoparticles anchored on CoP nanowires (Pt─CoP) via robust Pt─P─Co bonds. This strong synergy between Pt and CoP through interfacial Pt─P─Co bonds optimizes the adsorption of key intermediates for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in a wide pH range from 0 to 14. Furthermore, strong interaction between Pt and CoP accompanied by a delicate structure reduces interfacial charge transfer resistance, creates abundant active sites, and enhances catalyst durability, while facilitating active site exposure and electron/mass transfer during the HER process. Accordingly, the synthesized Pt─CoP exhibits low overpotentials of 79, 26, and 18 mV at 10 mA cm-2 in acidic, neutral, and alkaline media for HER, respectively, superior to commercial Pt/C benchmarks and most reported electrocatalysts. This work paves a new clue to exploit electrocatalysts with low-Pt-loading for pH-universal HER.