Highly-dispersed 2D NiFeP/CoP heterojunction trifunctional catalyst for efficient electrolysis of water and urea

The electrocatalytic production of "green hydrogen", such as through the electrolysis of water or urea has been vigorously advocated to alleviate the energy crisis. However, their electrode reactions including oxygen evolution reaction (OER), urea oxidation reaction (UOR), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) all suffer from sluggish kinetics, which urgently need catalysts to accelerate the processes. Herein, we design and prepare an OER/UOR/HER trifunctional catalyst by transforming the homemade CoO nanorod into a two-dimensional (2D) ultrathin heterojunction nickel-iron-cobalt hybrid phosphides nanosheet (NiFeP/CoP) via a hydrothermal-phosphorization method. Consequently, a strong electronic interaction was found among the Ni₂P/FeP₄/CoP heterogeneous interfaces, which regulates the electronic structure. Besides the high mass transfer property of 2D nanosheet, Ni₂P/FeP₄/CoP displays improved OER/UOR/HER performance. At 10 mA cm^-2, the OER overpotential reaches 274 mV in 1.0 M KOH, and the potential of UOR is only 1.389 V in 1.0 M KOH and 0.33 M urea. More strikingly, the two-electrode systems for electrolysis water and urea-assisted electrolysis water assembled by NiFeP/CoP could maintain long-term stability for 35 h and 12 h, respectively. This work may help to pave the way for upcoming research horizons of multifunctional electrocatalysts.