Enhancement of Acidic HER by Fe Doped CoP with Bimetallic Synergy

Compared to single metal site catalysis, the bimetallic synergistic strategy can exploit the complementary ability of different active sites for active species uptake and desorption to develop excellent catalysts. Pure phase metal phosphides are a disadvantage as a promising electrocatalyst for platinum-free hydrogen precipitation with either too strong or too weak adsorption of hydrogen. Here, synthetic Fe-doped CoP particles anchored with MWCNTs, which exhibited excellent catalytic performance for HER, required an overpotential of 123 mV to reach 10 mA cm−2, with a Tafel slope of 58.8 mV dec−1. It was found experimentally that Fe doping improved the conductivity of the catalyst regulated the electronic structure of CoP, and optimized the overall hydrogen adsorption energy of the catalyst. The difference in hydrogen adsorption strength of Fe, Co is used to break the symmetry constraint of single active center and improve the intrinsic activity of the catalyst, a strategy that can be used to guide the preparation of inexpensive and high performance catalysts.