Revealing component synergy of Ni‒Fe/black phosphorous composites synthesized by self-designed electrochemical method for enhancing photoelectrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

Developing high-activity and low-cost catalysts is the key to eliminate the limitation of sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) during electrocatalytic overall water splitting. Herein, Ni‒Fe/black phosphorous (BP) composites are synthesized using a simple three-electrode system, where exfoliation of bulky BP and synthesis of NiFe composites are simultaneously achieved. Under light illumination, the optimized Ni‒Fe/BP composite exhibits excellent photoelectrocatalytic OER performance (e.g., the overpotential is 58 mV lower than a commercial RuO₂ electrocatalyst at a current density of 10 mA·cm⁻²). The electron transfer on this composite is proved to follow a Ni‒BP‒Fe pathway. The electronic structure of this Ni‒Fe/BP composite is effectively regulated, leading to optimized adsorption strength of the intermediate OH* and improved intrinsic activity for the OER. Together with active sites on the support, this Ni‒Fe/BP composite possesses abundant electrochemical active sites and a bug surface area for the OER. The introduction of light further accelerates the electrocatalytic OER. This work provides a novel and facile method to synthesize high-performance metal/BP composites as well as the approaches to reveal their OER mechanisms.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

black phosphorous / (photo-)electrocatalysis / oxygen evolution reaction

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Disclosure of potential conflicts of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21571119), the Applied Basic Research Project of Shanxi Province (Grant Nos. 201901D211393 and 201901D211398), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (Grant No. 20210302124473), the Scientific and Technological Innovation Programs of Higher Education Institution in Shanxi (Grant No. 2019L0466), the Graduate Education Innovation Project of Shanxi Province (Grant No. 2021Y480), the China postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021M691366), the Graduate Education Innovation Project of Shanxi Normal University (Grant No. 2021XSY038), and the 1331 Engineering of Shanxi Province.

Electronic supplementary information

Supplementary materials can be found in the online version at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-023-0646-8, which include Figs. S1‒S4 and Table S1 revealing results from SEM, CV, and transient photocurrent test.

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