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Rational design of phosphorus-doped cobalt sulfides electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution

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Abstract

Moderate anionic doping is an effective approach to improve the performance of electrocatalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) since it can adjust the electronic structure, active site, and phase. The reported studies mainly focus on designing P doped CoS2, while other phases of cobalt sulfide, such as Co1−xS and Co9S8 doped with P are rarely investigated for HER electrocatalysts. Herein, various cobalt sulfides (including CoS2/Co1−xS, Co1−xS, and Co9S8) doped with P are anchored on carbon cloth through a facile hydrothermal method. Among tested electrocatalysts, P doped Co1−xS exhibits excellent electrocatalytic performance with an overpotential of 110 and 165 mV (vs. RHE) for current densities of 10 and 100 mA·cm−2, respectively. Density functional theory calculations reveal that P doped Co1−xS possesses a smaller bandgap and more optimal hydrogen adsorption sites than pristine Co1−xS. This work initially investigates various cobalt sulfides doped with P and further gets insight into the activity improvement mechanism of P doping, which could guide the design of earth-abundant HER electrocatalysts for the “hydrogen economy”.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21701153) and National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (No. BX201700042).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China

    Guoxing Qu, Yanan Yu, Zekang Wang, Yang Zhou & Qin Yue

  2. Henan Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, China

    Tianli Wu

  3. Ordnance NCO Academy, Army Engineering University of PLA, Wuhan, 430075, China

    Zhendong Tang

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  1. Guoxing Qu
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  2. Tianli Wu
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  3. Yanan Yu
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  7. Qin Yue
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Correspondence to Qin Yue.

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Qu, G., Wu, T., Yu, Y. et al. Rational design of phosphorus-doped cobalt sulfides electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. Nano Res. 12, 2960–2965 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2538-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2538-x

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