NiMn1.5PO4 thin layer supported on Ni foam as a highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting

Abstract In this work, we used Ni foam (NF) as a substrate to grow NiMn1.5PO4 thin layers on the surface of NF by a facile method. The NiMn1.5PO4 thin layer uniformly grows and covers on the surface of NF, thus form a three dimensional (3D) network structure. The 3D structure has a large specific surface area and a porous framework structure, which exhibited very low overpotentials and highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The overpotentials of the NiMn1.5PO4/NF catalysts were 72 mV and 198 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for HER and OER process, respectively. When NiMn1.5PO4/NF was used as both anode and cathode electrocatalyst in 1 M KOH, a low cell voltage of 1.48 V was achieved at current density of 10 mA cm−2 and showed a good long-term stability for 50 h. In the process of overall water splitting, the H2 yield can be reached 4.17 μmol min−1.