In-situ porous flake heterostructured NiCoP/Ni foam as electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

It is critical to produce highly efficient, inexpensive and long-term durability non-noble metal catalysts for hydrogen production by water electrolysis on basis of renewable energy. In this study, the porous flake heterostructured NiCoP grown directly on porous networked Ni foam (NiCoP/NF) was obtained by the hydrothermal and phosphating method. As electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the impact of Ni/Co ratios on NiCoP/NF catalytic performance was studied in 1.0 M KOH. Electrochemical measurement results display that the HER catalytic activity of NiCoP/NF increased first and then decreased with the decrease of Ni in the Ni/Co ratio. The NiCoP/NF1–3 catalyst (Ni/Co = 1:3) exhibited the highest performance for HER. A low overpotential of 99 mV at 10 mA cm−2 was achieved with the Tafel slope of 65.4 mV dec−1. In addition, porous flake heterostructured NiCoP/NF1–3 showed a good stability in alkaline condition, which maintained 20 h for stable water electrolysis at 10 mA cm−2. This present study will pave the way for the porous flake architecture development with high-performance HER in alkaline water electrolysis.