An efficient Co₃S₄/CoP hybrid catalyst for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Wang, Tingting Wu, Liqian Xu, Xiaobing Sun, Yuan Wang, Yuanqi Zhong, Wei Du, Youwei
Abstract	The development of efficient, universal and inexpensive electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is central to the area of sustainable energy conversion. Considering the Co-based sulfides/phosphides have the same catalytic mechanism with the hydrogenases occurring in nature. Here, a new catalyst based on Co3S4/CoP hybrid that is comprised entirely cheap and earthabundant elements, was first synthesized via a two-step method, the Co(CO3)0.5(OH)·0.11H2O precursor was prepared by a hydrothermal method, followed by phosphidation and sulphidation under Ar atmosphere simultaneously. The resulting Co3S4/CoP hybrid material possessed porous core-shell structure with a homogeneous element distribution and large electroactive surface area (~21.04 mF cm-2). More importantly, the nanostructured Co3S4/CoP electrode exhibits excellent HER properties in acid medium with a low onset overpotential of 34 mV, a small Tafel slope of 45 mV dec-1, as well as a large exchange current density of 150 μA cm-2. These results obtained in this study indicate that the Co3S4/CoP hybrid nanorod is promising replacement to the Pt-based catalysts for H2 production. Moreover, the synthetic method presented in this work can provide an efficient way to synthesis other nanocomposites.
Journal	Scientific Reports [Sci Rep]
Volume Number	7
DOI	10.1038/s41598-017-12332-4
PubMed Central reference number	PMC5605511
Issue Number	1
PubMed reference number	28928375
e-ISSN	20452322
Language	English
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
Publisher Date	2017-09-19
Publisher Place	London
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Multidisciplinary