Nickel phosphide catalysts for water oxidation
July 2017
by Junyuan Xu, Xian-Kui Wei, José Diogo Costa, José Luis Lado, Bryan Owens-Baird, Liliana P L Gonçalves, Soraia P S Fernandes, Marc Heggen, Dmitri Y Petrovykh, Rafal E Dunin-Borkowski, Kirill Kovnir, and Yury V. Kolen’ko
An approach to significantly enhance the performance of the cost-effective nickel phosphide catalyst for electrochemical water oxidation has been developed via interfacing with Mg oxide-hydroxide. We have synthesized Ni2P nanoparticles anchored on Mg2O(OH)2-like phase supported on carbon paper. During the oxygen evolution reaction, the well-defined Ni2P nanoparticles serve as precursors for the immediate formation of active and stable nanostructured nickel hydroxide catalyst.
![news](/en/er-c/news/announcements/2017/nickel-phosphide/news-118.jpg/@@images/image/great)
As the anode for the oxygen evolution reaction in an alkaline electrolyte, the electrode shows a modest Tafel slope of 48 mV dec–1 and a large turnover frequency of 0.05 s–1 at an overpotential of 0.4 V. Microstructure and composition studies of the catalyst suggest that interfacial strain between Mg- and Ni-containing phases is responsible for high catalytic activity. A significant increase in catalytic activity upon the combination of magnesium compound and transition-metal phosphide suggests an interesting strategy for the controlled and reproducible preparation of active Earth-abundant oxygen-evolving catalysts.
Further reading:
Junyuan Xu, Xian-Kui Wei, José Diogo Costa, José Luis Lado, Bryan Owens-Baird, Liliana P L Gonçalves, Soraia P S Fernandes, Marc Heggen, Dmitri Y Petrovykh, Rafal E Dunin-Borkowski, Kirill Kovnir, and Yury V. Kolen’ko:
Interface engineering in nanostructured nickel phosphide catalyst for efficient and stable water oxidation,