Integrated CoPt electrocatalyst combined with upgrading anodic reaction to boost hydrogen evolution reaction

Exploiting highly effective and low-cost electrocatalyst for water splitting is an instant challenge for the development of sustainable hydrogen energy. In this work, we report an integrated bifunctional electrocatalyst composed of CoPt nanoparticles uniformly distributed on the carbon nanosheet array (CNs@CoPt), which exhibits excellent activity for both cathodic hydrogen evolution in a wide range of pH conditions and anodic glycerol oxidation reaction. Based on this novel electrocatalyst, a hydrogen evolution coupled with glycerol oxidation system was constructed, exhibiting dramatically enhanced hydrogen production rate (48 L h(-1) m(-2)) in cathode, larger than traditional water splitting system (27 L h(-1) m(-2)), and gaining high-valuable product (formate, 113 g h(-)1 m(-2)) in anode. Moreover, a quite high utilization degree of Pt (35.1%) is achieved on CNs@CoPt owing to this hierarchical and alloy structure, 3.3 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (10.6 %). We believe that the strategy demonstrated in this work can be extended to fabricate other multifunctional integrated electrocatalysts with high performance for hydrogen production.

Automated summary

This work presents a bifunctional electrocatalyst composed of CoPt nanoparticles uniformly distributed on carbon nanosheet arrays. A hydrogen evolution coupled with glycerol oxidation system was constructed using this novel electrocatalyst, exhibiting enhanced hydrogen production rate and high-valuable product generation. The electrocatalyst also demonstrated a high Pt utilization compared to traditional water splitting systems.