Epitaxial growth of prussian blue analogue derived NiFeP thin film for efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water splitting plays an important role in the storage and conversion of clean energy. The development of efficient electrocatalytic materials for HER has attracted much attention in current research. In this work, a homogeneous NiFe-based prussian blue analogue (NiFe-PBA) thin film is prepared on the surface of nickel foam by liquid phase epitaxial (LPE) layer-by-layer (LBL) dipping method. Then the NiFe-PBA film reacts with PH3 produced by sodium hypophosphite to form a bimetal phosphide NiFeP film. The electrocatalytic HER properties under alkaline condition indicate that the NiFeP film only requires 99 ​mV overpotential to reach 10 ​mA ​cm−2 and the performance can be maintained for over 30 ​h without obvious degradation even at 100 ​mA ​cm−2. The results imply that the prepared NiFeP film has excellent HER performance and durable stability. This work is of great significance for the preparation of self-supporting and low-cost bimetal phosphide thin film for efficient HER.