Ultrafine Metal Phosphide Nanocrystals in SituDecorated on Highly Porous Heteroatom-Doped Carbons for Active Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

In spite of being technologically feasible, electrochemical water reduction to facilitate hydrogen production is confronted with issues mainly due to the lack of affordable and efficient catalysts for the water reduction half reaction. Reported herein is the fabrication of metal phosphides nanocrystals uniformly loaded on highly porous heteroatom-modified carbons through one-step carbonization–phosphization methodology. Remarkably, the well-structured porosity and the increased electrochemically accessible active sites ensure the high catalytic efficiency for electrochemical hydrogen evolution in acidic medium in terms of small onset potentials (33 mV) and large cathodic current density (0.481 mA cm–2), even comparable to the state-of-the-art Pt/C benchmark. The easily prepared composite catalysts of structural and textural peculiarities may serve as promising non-noble metal catalysts for realistic hydrogen evolution.