Carbon-incorporated porous honeycomb NiCoFe phosphide nanospheres derived from a MOF precursor for overall water splitting

Abstract

Developing non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts with high catalytic activity is an urgent task for overall electrocatalytic water decomposition. In this study, carbon-incorporated porous honeycomb NiCoFe phosphide (labelled NiCoFeP/C) was successfully developed from a metal–organic framework (MOF) precursor for the first time. Benefitting from a unique structure and compositional advantages, NiCoFeP/C exhibits excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen evolution reaction/hydrogen evolution reaction (OER/HER) in alkaline solution, showing low OER and HER overpotentials of 270 and 149 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², respectively. This work successfully developed a MOF-derived novel multi-component transition metal phosphide with a unique structure, which shed some light on the development of promising catalysts for the OER/HER.