Single-Atom Tungsten-Doped CoP Nanoarrays as a High-Efficiency pH-Universal Catalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are urgently required to produce renewable clean H2 fuel. However, developing low-cost, highly active, stable, and pH-universal HER catalysts remains a big challenge. Here, a facile solution route is carried out to construct single-atom tungsten-doped CoP nanoarrays (W-CoP) from metal organic frameworks, which can be directly used as a binder-free, high-activity, and robust pH-universal electrocatalyst toward HER. The W-CoP shows competitive performance compared with the commercial Pt/C, as confirmed by both systematic experimental results and density functional theory calculation. The single-atom W dopant results in full atom utility and tunes the electronic structure of CoP with better activity. As a further demonstration, the W-CoP catalyst also shows a promising property for seawater hydrogen production, holding good potential for real application.