CoP/Co2P hollow spheres embedded in porous N-doped carbon as highly efficient multifunctional electrocatalyst for Zn–air battery driving water splitting device

Highly efficient multifunctional earth-abundant elements based electrocatalysts are key important for development of clean energy transformation technologies, such as metal-air batteries, fuel cells and water electrolysis. Herein, composite catalysts of N-doped carbon wrapping CoxP hollow spheres have been successfully prepared by pyrolysis of precursors from self-assembly of cobalt salt, terephthalic acid and PVP followed by carbonization and phosphatization in the presence of sodium hypophosphite. The resulted composites showed high specific surface areas, pore volumes and nitrogen contents, especially more than 47% of pyridinic-N. The electrocatalytic activity tests showed that the optimized CoxP-NC-420 sample exhibited superior multifunctional performances and high stabilities for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) under alkaline conditions. A low overpotential of 125/273 mV (at 10 mA cm−2) and Tafel slope of 66/81 mV dec−1 was obtained for HER and OER, respectively. As for ORR, as high as 0.860 V of half-wave potential was obtained, which is even 36 mV higher than that of Pt/C (20%). The catalyst also exhibited high practical performances on water electrolysis and Zn−air battery. Only 1.61 V of cell voltage was needed to reach 10 mA cm−2 for water electrolysis, and 1.374 V of open-circuit potential and 52 mW cm−2 of power density were obtained for Zn−air battery, which was 16 mW cm−2 higher than that of Pt/C (20%). Moreover, a highly effcient self-driven water electrolyzer has been designed with CoxP-NC-420 as both anode and cathode catalyst, powered by two-series-connected CoxP-NC-420-based Zn–air batteries. This work provides a new strategy for fabrication of non-precious multifunctional electrocatalysts.