Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 8, 2026

Synthesis and Performance Characterizations of Transition Metal Single Atom Catalyst for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction
Published on: April 10, 2018
High-performance bifunctional porous non-noble metal phosphide catalyst for overall water splitting
Fang Yu1,2, Haiqing Zhou1,2, Yufeng Huang3
1Department of Physics and TcSUH, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA.
Abstract:
Water electrolysis is an advanced energy conversion technology to produce hydrogen as a clean and sustainable chemical fuel, which potentially stores the abundant but intermittent renewable energy sources scalably. Since the overall water splitting is an uphill reaction in low efficiency, innovative breakthroughs are desirable to greatly improve the efficiency by rationally designing non-precious metal-based robust bifunctional catalysts for promoting both the cathodic hydrogen evolution and anodic oxygen evolution reactions. We report a hybrid catalyst constructed by iron and dinickel phosphides on nickel foams that drives both the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions well in base, and thus substantially expedites overall water splitting at 10 mA cm-2 with 1.42 V, which outperforms the integrated iridium (IV) oxide and platinum couple (1.57 V), and are among the best activities currently. Especially, it delivers 500 mA cm-2 at 1.72 V without decay even after the durability test for 40 h, providing great potential for large-scale applications.
Related Concept Videos
Noble Gases
The elements in group 18 are noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon). They earned the name “noble” because they were assumed to be nonreactive since they have filled valence shells. In 1962, Dr. Neil Bartlett at the University of British Columbia proved this assumption to be false.
Alkali Metals
Table 1: Properties of the alkali metals
Bonding in Metals
Metallic Solids
All metallic solids exhibit high thermal and electrical conductivity, metallic luster, and malleability....
Metal-Ligand Bonds
In these complexes, transition metals form coordinate covalent bonds, a kind of Lewis acid-base interaction in which both of the electrons in the bond are contributed by a donor (Lewis base) to an electron acceptor (Lewis acid). The Lewis acid in...
¹H NMR: Complex Splitting
Splitting diagrams or splitting tree diagrams are routinely used to depict such complex couplings. While drawing splitting diagrams, the splitting with the larger coupling constant is usually applied...

