Development an alternative approach to efficiently and economically produce hydrogen from water to replace non-renewable fossil fuels is one of the great challenges in the energy field. In this paper, a Co foam with 90% porosity and pore size of a few tens of micrometers was prepared, on which FeCoP nanoflowers were in-situ formed. Such a combination was used as a new electrocatalyst/self-supporting electrode for high efficiency hydrogen evolution reaction. Thanks to the larger surface area (and thus many more active sites), and quicker mass transfer through the porous structure, the Co foam supported FeCoP electrode exhibited much better HER performance than the commercial Ni foam supported counterpart prepared under identical conditions. In the case of the former, only -44 mV overpotential was required to achieve a geometric current density of -10 mA cm-2, and the electrode showed a high stability at a current density < -500 mA·cm-2. The electrode developed in this work could be potentially used as a novel electrode for future large-scale production of hydrogen. In addition, the novel strategy reported here could be similarly used to develop many other types of self-supporting electrodes with further improved HER performance.

中文翻译：

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用于高效析氢反应的超多孔钴泡沫负载 FeCoP 电极

开发一种从水中有效且经济地生产氢气以替代不可再生化石燃料的替代方法是能源领域面临的巨大挑战之一。本文制备了一种孔隙率为90%、孔径为几十微米的Co泡沫，在其上原位形成FeCoP纳米花。这种组合被用作高效析氢反应的新型电催化剂/自支撑电极。由于更大的表面积（因此有更多的活性位点）和通过多孔结构的更快质量传递，Co 泡沫负载的 FeCoP 电极表现出比在相同条件下制备的商业 Ni 泡沫负载的电极更好的 HER 性能。在前者的情况下，仅需要-44 mV的过电位即可达到-10 mA cm-2的几何电流密度，并且该电极在电流密度<-500 mA·cm-2时表现出高稳定性。在这项工作中开发的电极有可能用作未来大规模生产氢气的新型电极。此外，这里报道的新策略可类似地用于开发许多其他类型的自支撑电极，进一步提高 HER 性能。