Porous FeP/CoP heterogeneous materials as efficient alkaline oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts

Abstract

Transition metal phosphides have been widely studied because of their low cost and good conductivity, attempting to replace precious metal-based materials as new electrochemical catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction. However, the existing high-performance phosphide catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction have bottlenecks such as difficulty to accurately determine the components and the catalytic mechanism. Therefore, in this study, we designed and synthesized FeP/CoP heterogeneous materials with a unique porous morphology as OER catalysts. The as-prepared heterogeneous materials have excellent OER catalytic activity and stability. The overpotential at 10 mA cm⁻² is only 266 mV, and the Tafel slope is 60.86 mV dec⁻¹. We believe that the good catalytic performance of the as-prepared material is mainly due to the unique morphology and redistribution of interfacial charges. The results of this study provide new ideas for designing efficient metal phosphide-based OER catalysts.