Lattice tensile strain regulated by ruthenium doping in NiCoP anchoring on carbonized wood for promoting hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

It has become increasingly urgent and imperative to develop sustainable, efficient and stable self-supporting electrodes for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, trace Ru-doped NiCoP in situ grown and anchored in carbonized wood (Ru-NiCoP/CW), exhibits an excellent HER catalytic activity. At −10 mA cm⁻², it shows an extremely low overpotential and a small Tafel slope of − 25 mV and 60 mV dec⁻¹, respectively. And it has a long-term stability of 100 h at −50 mA cm⁻². Such impressive HER performance of Ru-NiCoP/CW is mainly due to the strain effect and electronic effect induced by the in-situ growth of trace Ru-doped bimetallic phosphide NiCoP on the porous self-supporting CW carrier. This method is believed to provide a valuable reference for providing bimetallic phosphides with very low Ru content on carbonized wood electrode materials.