A porous heterostructure catalyst for oxygen evolution: synergy between IrP₂nanocrystals and ultrathin P,N-codoped...

Designing efficient and robust oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts is of great importance for various electrochemical energy storage and conversion applications. Herein, we developed IrP₂nanocrystals uniformly anchored in P,N-codoped carbon nanosheets (IrP₂@PNC-NS) as highly active OER electrocatalysts. The ultrathin PNC-NS reconstructs an agaric-like porous structure, which can inhibit the agglomeration of the IrP₂nanocrystals effectively. Moreover, thein-situphosphatization leads to the formation of a strong electron interaction between PNC-NS and IrP₂nanocrystals, endowing the heterostructure materials with satisfying synergistic effects. Benefiting from the collaborative advantages of ideal configuration structure and favorable synergistic effects, IrP₂@PNC-NS exhibits excellent OER performance with a low overpotential of 221 mV at 10 mA cm^-2, and a small Tafel slope of 37.5 mV dec^-1. DFT calculations reveal that the synergistic effects derived from the IrP₂/PNC interfaces, which can effectively tune the activation barriers towards facilitating the oxygen evolution process. This work provides new insight into the design of heterostructure materials for advanced OER electrocatalysts.