The development of efficient and cost-effective catalytic electrodes is of great importance to electrolysis. Herein, a strategy of fabricating practical catalytic electrodes by depositing conductive catalysts on inexpensive and easily accessible insulating substrates of paper, textiles and sponge has been realized and well developed. These electrodes are found to be highly active toward overall water splitting. As a distinctive example, the Ni–P–B/paper electrode affords 50 mA cm⁻² at overpotentials of only 76 mV for the hydrogen evolution reaction and 263 mV for the oxygen evolution reaction, and can survive at large current density of 1000 mA cm⁻² for over 240 h without apparent performance degradation in 1.0 M KOH. A two-electrode cell constructed by this paper electrode, which is only 1/5 the weight of a traditional metal electrode, delivered 50 mA cm⁻² water-splitting current at a cell voltage of only 1.661 V, rivalling the integrated state-of-the-art Pt–C/Ni and IrO₂/Ni electrode. Moreover, a functional Ni–P–B/paper ring electrode with in situ separation function has been constructed, enabling simultaneous generation, separation and collection of hydrogen and oxygen. This discovery may enable a large extension toward practical catalytic electrodes that are also active, cheap, light, flexible, earth-abundant and recyclable.

中文翻译：

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使用绝缘且环保的基材制造实用的催化电极以进行总水分解

开发高效和具有成本效益的催化电极对电解非常重要。在此，已经实现并很好地开发了一种通过将导电催化剂沉积在纸，纺织品和海绵的廉价且容易接近的绝缘基底上来制造实用的催化电极的策略。发现这些电极对整个水分解具有很高的活性。作为一个独特的例子，Ni–P–B /纸电极在氢气释放反应仅76 mV和氧气释放反应263 mV的超电势下提供50 mA cm ^-2，并且可以在1000 mA的大电流密度下生存厘米^-2在1.0 M KOH中持续超过240小时，性能没有明显下降。由该纸电极构成的两电极电池，其重量仅为传统金属电极的1/5，在仅1.661 V的电池电压下可提供50 mA cm ^-2的水分解电流，可与电池的集成状态相媲美。先进的Pt–C / Ni和IrO ₂ / Ni电极。此外，已经构造了具有原位分离功能的功能性Ni–PB–B /纸环电极，可以同时产生，分离和收集氢和氧。这一发现可以使向实用的催化电极大范围扩展，这些催化电极也具有活性，廉价，轻便，灵活，富于地球和可回收利用的特点。