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Cobalt tungsten phosphide with tunable W-doping as highly efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction

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Abstract

It has been of interest in seeking electrocatalysts that could exercise equally high-efficient and durable hydrogen evolution upon nonselective electrolytes in both acidic and alkaline environments. Herein, we report a facile strategy to fabricate cobalt tungsten phosphides (CoxW2−xP2/C) hollow polyhedrons with tunable composition based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) template method. By the deliberate control of W doping, the synthesized catalyst with the composition of Co0.9W1.1P2/C is found to be able to achieve a current density of 10 mA·cm−2 at overpotentials of 35 and 54 mV in acidic and alkaline media, respectively. This combined electrochemical property stands atop the state-of-the-art electrocatalyst counterparts. To unveil the peculiar behavior of the structure, density functional theory (DFT) calculation was implemented and reveals that the surface W-doping facilitates the optimization of hydrogen absorption free energy (ΔGH*) as well as the thermodynamic and kinetics barriers for water dissociation, which is coupled with the hollow structure of Co-W phosphides, leading to the prominent HER catalytic performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (No. 51901018), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M660456), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51771027 and 21676216), Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by China Association for Science and Technology (YESS, 2019QNRC001), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. FRF-MP-19-001), National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFB0702100) and Singapore MOE AcRF Tier 1 grant M4011528.

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  1. Bowei Zhang and Chaojiang Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Advanced Materials and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Bowei Zhang, Kang Huang & Junsheng Wu

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Bowei Zhang, Dongdong Peng, Zhong Chen & Yizhong Huang

  3. School of mechanical engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhongguancun Avenue, Haidian district, Beijing, 100081, China

    Chaojiang Li

  4. School of Chemical Engineering, Northwest University, Xi’an, 710069, China

    Jun Hu

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  1. Bowei Zhang
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  3. Jun Hu
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Correspondence to Jun Hu, Junsheng Wu or Yizhong Huang.

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Zhang, B., Li, C., Hu, J. et al. Cobalt tungsten phosphide with tunable W-doping as highly efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction. Nano Res. 14, 4073–4078 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3342-y

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