In situ coupling of CoP with MoO2 for enhanced hydrogen evolution

Abstract

The development of highly active and stable catalysts based on low-cost materials for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is crucial to catalytic water splitting. In this work, we report on using molybdenum trioxide as an intermediary to in situ synthesize strongly coupled porous CoP/MoO₂ hybrid thin films for the HER. By virtue of modulating the H₂O adsorption energy on the surface of CoP, together with the abundant and accessible active sites derived from the in situ formation of a porous structure, the as-prepared CoP/MoO₂ hybrid thin films exhibit an excellent HER catalytic performance, only requiring a small overpotential of 41 mV to support a current density of 20 mA cm⁻², which is comparable to the catalytic performance of the Pt/C benchmark.