Noble Metal Nanoparticles Anchored on Transition Metal Phosphides for Effective pH-Universal Hydrogen Evolution

Constructing electrocatalysts with high activity and low precious metal content is essential for achieving efficient hydrogen production in pH-universal overall water splitting. Herein, five types of noble metal anchored transition metal phosphides are analyzed by theoretical derivation. Based on the calculation results, a suitable hybrid is screened out of Pt nanoparticles anchored on CoP nanowires (Pt─CoP) via robust Pt─P─Co bonds. This strong synergy between Pt and CoP through interfacial Pt─P─Co bonds optimizes the adsorption of key intermediates for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in a wide pH range from 0 to 14. Furthermore, strong interaction between Pt and CoP accompanied by a delicate structure reduces interfacial charge transfer resistance, creates abundant active sites, and enhances catalyst durability, while facilitating active site exposure and electron/mass transfer during the HER process. Accordingly, the synthesized Pt─CoP exhibits low overpotentials of 79, 26, and 18 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 in acidic, neutral, and alkaline media for HER, respectively, superior to commercial Pt/C benchmarks and most reported electrocatalysts. This work paves a new clue to exploit electrocatalysts with low-Pt-loading for pH-universal HER.