Paintbrush-like Co doped Cu3P grown on Cu foam as an efficient janus electrode for overall water splitting

In this work, we demonstrated a facile strategy to fabricate paintbrush-like Co Doped Cu3P architecture grown on porous copper foam (Co-Cu3P/CF), which was obtained from cation exchange reaction followed by a pyrolysis assisted phosphorization step. Co-Cu3P/CF showed outstanding electrocatalytic performance for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 1 M NaOH solution, affording low overpotential of 270 mV to reach the current density of 50 mA cm(-2) for OER. As for HER, a low overpotential of 200 mV is required to obtain the same catalytic current density. The overall water electrolyzer by using Co-Cu3P/CF as both anode and cathode showed a low cell voltage of 1.55 V to deliver 10 mA cm(-2). The excellent electrocatalytic performance of Co-Cu3P/CF could be ascribed to its paintbrush-like hierarchical architecture, offering plentiful of active sites and accelerating electrolyte penetration, the presence of Co dopant also could rationally modify its electronic properties, and thus lead to the synergetic effects. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.