Optimizing electronic structure for enhanced electrocatalytic hydrogen reaction efficiency with cobalt-doped phosphorus-tungsten catalyst

In recent years, low cost and high efficiency tungsten-based phosphide have been widely used in the field of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Numerous studies have focused on improving the performance of these phosphides. In this work, a nitrogen-doped carbon-supported cobalt-doped phosphorus-tungsten (0.25Co-WP/NC) was successfully synthesized via a one-pot synthesis and one-step pyrolysis method to enhance the HER performance by optimizing the electronic structure of phosphorus-tungsten (WP) through doping strategies. Among the metal-doped samples, 0.25Co-WP/NC exhibited lower charge transfer resistance (R ct ), higher catalytic hydrogen evolution activity, and superior stability. Electrochemical performance results revealed that 0.25Co-WP/NC required an overpotential of 176.1 mV in acidic medium to generate a current density of 10 mA cm −2 , with a Tafel slope of 81.3 mV dec −1 . Overall, this work provides an effective strategy for optimizing the catalytic hydrogen evolution activity of transition metal-based phosphide electrocatalysts.