Controlled synthesis of NiCoP@NiM LDH (M=Cu, Fe, Co) as efficient hydrogen evolution reaction electrocatalyst

In the context of increasingly sophisticated chemistry, the production of hydrogen from water splitting has long been a promising process. The high purity of the product and low level of contamination make water splitting as an ideal way to produce hydrogen. In this paper, we designed a series of novel [email protected] LDH/NF catalysts (M=Cu, Fe, and Co) with a three-dimensional heterogeneous structure and outstanding hydrogen production efficiency. To better compare the hydrogen production efficiency of [email protected] LDH/NF, we also performed the doping of other nonprecious metals Cu ([email protected] LDH/NF) and Co ([email protected] LDH/NF) and studied them as two extra catalysts. The [email protected] LDH/NF electrodes display a low overpotential of only 119 mV at a current density of 10 mA·cm−2 in the alkaline environment of 1 M KOH for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This superior performance of HER is related to the unique structure of [email protected] LDH/NF. In addition, the Ni foam substrate has a three-dimensional network structure, the active site of the [email protected] LDH/NF will be more easily exposed under the support of this unique structure. These experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) demonstrate that the [email protected] LDH/NF electrode has the best electrochemical activity for HER.