Iron-Modulated Three-Dimensional CoNiP Vertical Nanoarrays: An Exploratory Binder-Free Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Efficient Overall Water Splitting

Abstract

Rational construction of self-template catalysts for efficient electrolytic water splitting reactions is being a challenging prospect in sustainable energy production. For the first time, owing to these aims, we report a self-template representation of self-assembled iron-modulated cobalt-nickel phosphide (Fe-CoNiP) grown on 3D-nickel foam (NF) using a facile amine hydrolysis-approached synergetic phosphorylation strategy. Due to its unique vertically standing self-template hierarchical nanoarrays and atomic modulated multicomponent system, these Fe-CoNiP nanoarchitectures exhibit excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions with very low applied overpotentials of 110 and 280 mV to obtain 10 mA cm-2, respectively, and an overpotential value of 390 mV (J10) obtained for overall water splitting overtakes most precious-metal/phosphide-based electrocatalysts in an alkaline medium. Moreover, the rationally cocrystallized Fe-CoNiP binder-free electrocatalyst as a multifunctional electrode has robust physicochemical stability above 2 days with very little degradation during alkaline electrolysis. These demonstrated results may lead to new insights into constructing an alternative electrocatalyst with hierarchical nanoarchitecture to boost the overall water splitting.