Single-Atom Tungsten-Doped CoP Nanoarrays as a High-Efficiency pH-Universal Catalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction
Jun Wu, Nannan Han, Shoucong Ning, Tian Chen, Chenyu Zhu, Chunxu Pan, Haijun Wu, Stephen J. Pennycook, Cao Guan
Abstract
Efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are urgently required to produce renewable clean H2 fuel. However, developing low-cost, highly active, stable, and pH-universal HER catalysts remains a big challenge. Here, a facile solution route is carried out to construct single-atom tungsten-doped CoP nanoarrays (W-CoP) from metal organic frameworks, which can be directly used as a binder-free, high-activity, and robust pH-universal electrocatalyst toward HER. The W-CoP shows competitive performance compared with the commercial Pt/C, as confirmed by both systematic experimental results and density functional theory calculation. The single-atom W dopant results in full atom utility and tunes the electronic structure of CoP with better activity. As a further demonstration, the W-CoP catalyst also shows a promising property for seawater hydrogen production, holding good potential for real application.