Abstract
Designing efficient and stable non-precious metal HER (hydrogen evolution reaction) electrocatalysts with high large current density adaptability is significant for industrial application of hydrogen production by water electrolysis.Herein,a facile strategy was developed to construct a multi-phase Ni3P-Co2 P-(Ni-Co) film with self-supporting hierarchically micro/nano-porous structure by using bubble template method electrodeposition of self-supporting micro-porous NiCoP film,oxygen-free annealing for phase separation producing Ni3P-Ni-Co2P-Co structure,and acid etching for constructing surface nano-porous structure.The effective active sites for HER was significantly increased due to the hierarchically micro/nano-porous structure,which not only enlarged the surface roughness,but enhanced the bubble detachment by improving the hydrophilicity.Meanwhile,the HER electrolysis durability was improved benefiting from the Ni3P-Co2P phases with high corrosion resistance (especially in acid solution) and the self-supporting film structure without binder.Consequently,the NiCoP-OA-AE film exhibited high HER catalytic performance,which delivered a current density of 10 mA cm 2 at a low overpotential of 42.9 and 39.7 mV in 1 M KOH and 0.5 M H2SO4,respectively.It also possessed high long-term electrolysis durability,and the cell voltage of water electrolysis using self-supporting porous NiCoP-OA-AE‖IrO2-Ta2O5 electrolyzer at 500 mA cm 2 for 250 h in 0.5 M H2SO4 is only 2.9 V.