Doping Regulation in Transition Metal Phosphides for Hydrogen Evolution Catalysts

Due to their excellent catalytic properties, transition metal phosphides have become the most promising and inexpensive electrocatalytic materials to replace noble metals in electrocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen production. Element doping is an efficient way to greatly improve their activity and stability. This review revisits recent research on regulating the properties of transition metal phosphides through doping modifications. The types of elements(metal doping, non-metal doping, co-doping), the number of elements(single element doping, multi-element doping, high entropy doping), and the doping position are discussed in detail. And how these factors tune the electronic structure of transition metal phosphides are studied. Through the combination of experimental results and theoretical calculation, the effects of doped elements on hydrogen adsorption intensity, water adsorption and dissociation, charge transfer and transmission were analyzed. Moreover, the structure-activity relationship between doped structure, electronic structure, and hydrogen evolution reaction(HER) catalytic performance was obtained. Finally, we put forward the remaining challenges and future research directions of related research.