Promoted electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance by constructing Ni12P5–Ni2P heterointerfaces

Transition metal phosphides (TMPs) have been considered as cheap alternatives of precious metal platinum for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In the past decades, many reports have indicated that the engineering of heterointerfaces between different components could efficiently enhance the activity of HER catalysts. Here, we report a facile method to construct Ni12P5–Ni2P heterostructure by using a low temperature phosphorization strategy. The obtained Ni12P5–Ni2P heterostructure shows high activity toward HER with an overpotential value of 166 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 60 mV dec−1 in 0.5 M H2SO4. Compared with pure Ni2P and Ni12P5, the Ni12P5–Ni2P heterostructure has more active sites and faster HER kinetics due to the presence of the interfaces between Ni12P5 and Ni2P. Furthermore, we used the obtained Ni12P5–Ni2P as cathodic catalyst and IrO2/Ti as anodic material to set up a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer which shows good stability after 120 h continuous constant current electrolysis at 200 mA cm−2. This work demonstrates the positive effect of heterostructure for HER catalysts and provides a feasible strategy for constructing earth-abundant electrocatalysts.