Vanadium doped cobalt phosphide nanorods array as a bifunctional electrode catalyst for efficient and stable overall water splitting

Abstract For the sake of sustainable development, water splitting without other pollutants has been a candidate technology in green energy. Due to the low efficiency of water splitting, innovative breakthroughs are desirable to improve efficiency significantly. Nowadays, the rational design of non-precious metal-based robust bifunctional catalysts is considered to be a feasible way to promote both the cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we proposed a vanadium doped CoP nanorods array catalyst grown on carbon cloth (V–CoP NRs/CC) as a bifunctional electrode material. When V–CoP NRs/CC employed as both anode and cathode materials, it only demands low cell voltages of 1.491 V and 1.606 V to drive a current density of 10 mA cm−2 (j10) and 50 mA cm−2 (j50) in 1 M KOH alkaline electrolyte. Especially, V–CoP NRs/CC can maintain its outstanding electrocatalytic performance for more than 40 h at j50 in overall water splitting.