Iron-Modulated Three-Dimensional CoNiP Vertical Nanoarrays: An Exploratory Binder-Free Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Efficient Overall Water Splitting

Rational construction of self-template catalysts for efficient electrolytic water splitting reactions is being a challenging prospect in sustainable energy production. For the first time, owing to these aims, we report a self-template representation of self-assembled iron-modulated cobalt-nickel phosphide (Fe-CoNiP) grown on 3D-nickel foam (NF) using a facile amine hydrolysis-approached synergetic phosphorylation strategy. Due to its unique vertically standing self-template hierarchical nanoarrays and atomic modulated multicomponent system, these Fe-CoNiP nanoarchitectures exhibit excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions with very low applied overpotentials of 110 and 280 mV to obtain 10 mA cm(-2), respectively, and an overpotential value of 390 mV (J(10)) obtained for overall water splitting overtakes most precious-metal/phosphide-based electrocatalysts in an alkaline medium. Moreover, the rationally cocrystallized Fe-CoNiP binder-free electrocatalyst as a multifunctional electrode has robust physicochemical stability above 2 days with very little degradation during alkaline electrolysis. These demonstrated results may lead to new insights into constructing an alternative electrocatalyst with hierarchical nanoarchitecture to boost the overall water splitting.

Automated summary

The Fe-CoNiP nanostructures fabricated using a self-template approach exhibit excellent catalytic performance in electrolytic water splitting reactions, achieving low overpotentials and high efficiency. This binder-free electrocatalyst demonstrates outstanding stability and has the potential to serve as a new type of catalyst for enhancing overall water splitting efficiency.