Preparation of a superhydrophilic and amorphous Ni-Sb-P nanostructure: A highly performance and durable bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting

The quest for highly active and durable catalysts to simultaneously accelerate hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is inevitable for the universal exploitation of electrochemical water splitting to store renewable energy. Herein, a facile and versatile procedure for preparing super -hydrophilic and amorphous Ni-Sb-P nanostructure on graphite is developed. The newly designed nanos-tructure provides distinctive advantages, such as more active sites, strong electronic interaction, and the ability to maintain microstructure, which endow the resulting bifunctional Ni-Sb-P/graphite catalyst with extraordinary HER and OER properties in alkaline media. The as-fabricated electrode needs only low overpotentials of 77 and 348 mV at 10 mA.cm-2 toward HER and OER, respectively. It sustains at least 80 h working at 100 mA.cm-2 with degradation of less than 5%. Noteworthy, the strong interaction of P atoms with Ni and Sb on the graphite not only makes an amorphous structure to expose abundant active sites but also dramatically enhances the electronic structure of the catalyst to simplify charge transfer. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.