P-Modified Co2C@Co Significantly Enhances the Electrocatalytic Water Splitting Performance

To address the issues of energy depletion and environmental pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuels, electrocatalytic overall water splitting for hydrogen production is one of the very promising approaches. The key to the large-scale application of electrocatalytic overall water splitting lies in the search for low-cost, high-content, and high-performance electrocatalysts. In this paper, through a two-step process of carbonization followed by phosphination, the P-modified Co2C@Co/NF composite material (P–Co2C@Co/NF) was successfully designed and synthesized. P–Co2C@Co/NF exhibits excellent performance in hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER). Under alkaline conditions, the overpotential for HER and OER can reach 10 mA cm–2 current density with only 75 mV and 246 mV respectively. P–Co2C@Co/NF demonstrates excellent overall water splitting capability, requiring only 1.63 V of driving voltage to achieve 10 current density. This provides a new method for enhancing the electrocatalytic performance of heteroatom-modified transition metal compounds.