Co and Fe Phosphide Nanoparticles Supported on Vanadium-Functionalized Carbon Support as Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Alkaline Solution

Developing a low-cost and highly stable transition-metal-based catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has attracted great attention, while the fabrication of high-performance nanocatalysts with controllable morphology and composition is challenging. Herein, we reported a leaf-like Co–V–Fe/P-NC composite with metal phosphide nanoparticles (CoP, FeP 2 ) anchoring on a vanadium(V)-functionalized carbon support via the carbonization of a Co-ZIF-L as a precursor. In this composite catalyst, the V species (especially V 2 O 3 ) acted as a modulator to adjust the catalyst surface, which exhibited strong interactions with transition metals and affected the distribution of electrons of CoP and FeP 2 active sites. The results also demonstrated that the decorated V species in the catalysts can improve the electrochemical stability of the composite catalysts. The optimized Co–V–Fe/P-NC showed a small overpotential of 388 mV to reach a current density of 50 mA cm –2, with an excellent stability over 20 h in alkaline conditions. Meanwhile, the synthesized catalysts also had a relatively low voltage gap for overall water splitting. This work proposed an efficient method to modulate the composition and structure of carbon-based electrocatalysts using nano V species, which attracted great attention in the field of clean energy storage and conversion.