Three dimensional carbon substrate materials for electrolysis of water

Water splitting is an important approach for energy conversion to obtain hydrogen and oxygen. Apart from solar water splitting, electrochemical method plays a key role in the booming field, and it is urgent to develop novel and efficient catalysts to accelerate water splitting reaction. Recently, newly emerging self-supported materials, especially three dimensional (3D) carbon substrate electrochemical catalysts, have attracted great attention benefiting from their fantastic catalytic performances, such as large surface area, enhanced conductivity, tunable porosity, and so on. This review summarizes the outstanding materials used for hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. And catalysts that acted as both anode and cathode in two-electrode systems for overall water splitting are introduced systematically. The opportunities and challenges of 3D carbon substrate materials for electrochemical water splitting are proposed.