Rational design of pt-decorated nickel phosphide for boosting the catalytic activity toward alkaline water splitting

Designing efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is essential to upgrade the existing energy structure. Pt-based catalysts have extraordinary catalytic activity for HER, but they are limited by high costs and low reserves. Herein, we report that the combination of Pt and nickel phosphides can effectively reduce the amount of Pt and improve the catalytic activity. The synthesized Pt/Ni-P/NF catalyst exhibits excellent HER activity which requires only 86 mV overpotential at a current density of 10 mA cm−2, together with a Tafel slope of 66.6 mV dec−1, and also exhibits high stability for 100 h at a current density of 100 mA cm−2 with small decay. When Pt/Ni-P/NF and Ni-P/NF were used as the cathode and anode of an alkaline electrolytic cell (Pt/Ni-P/NF || Ni-P/NF), the cell voltage was only 1.59 V at a current density of 10 mA cm−2. This work provides a new method for designing high-activity and high-stability catalysts for industrial water splitting.