Trace ruthenium promoted dual-reconstruction of CoFeP@C/NF for activating overall water splitting performance beyond precious-metals
Jinhong Ren, Jie Liu, Yunmei Du, Shuangshuang Li, Mengmeng Wang, Bin Li, Bo Yang, Lei Wang, Yanru Liu
Abstract
At present, Ru dopants mainly enhance electrocatalytic performance by inducing strain, vacancy, local electron difference, and synergy. Surprisingly, this work innovatively proposes that trace Ru atoms induce dual-reconstruction of phosphide by regulating the electronic configuration and proportion of Co-P/Co-O species, and ultimately activate superb electrocatalytic performance. Specifically, Ru-CoFeP@C/nickel foam (NF) is reconstructed to generate hydrophilic Co(OH)2 nanosheets during the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process, further accelerating the alkaline HER kinetics of phosphide. And the as-formed CoOOH during the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) process directly accelerates the oxygen overflow efficiency. As expected, the overpotential at 100 mA·cm−2 (η100) values of the reconstructed Ru-CoFeP@C/NF are 0.104 and 0.257 V for HER and OER, which are greatly lower than that of Pt/C-NF and RuO2-NF benchmarks, respectively. This work provides guidance for the construction of high-performance catalysts for HER and OER dual reconstruction. This work provides a new idea for the optimization of catalyst structure and electrocatalytic performance.