Ni-Fe-P nanoparticles encapsulated in carbon nanotubes supported on carbon cloth for overall water splitting

The development of bifunctional electrocatalysts with high-performance hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial to overall water splitting. Herein, Ni, Fe-based phosphide nanoparticles encapsulated in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) arrays on carbon cloth (CC) were assembled by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and low-temperature phosphating processes. The optimized Ni-Fe-P@CNTs-CC exhibited low overpotentials of 114.0 mV at −10 mA cm−2 and 190.0 mV at 20 mA cm−2 in 1.0 M KOH for HER and OER, respectively. Moreover, electrocatalytic water splitting cells assembled using Ni-Fe-P@CNTs-CC electrodes required a cell voltage of 1.58 V at 10 mA cm−2 and exhibited good stability for more than 30 h.