Self-templated fabrication of hierarchical hollow manganese-cobalt phosphide yolk-shell spheres for enhanced oxygen evolution reaction

Hierarchical nanostructures with hollow architectures can provide rich active sites, improved transport of ions, and highly robust structure for electrochemical applications. In this work, we report the self-templated fabrication hierarchical manganese-cobalt phosphide (Mn-Co phosphide) yolk-shell spheres using uniform cobalt glycerate as sacrificial templates. Through a simple exchange reaction manganese precursor solution at room temperature, these are readily converted to Mn-Co LDH spheres, which be further phosphidized 350 °C under inert atmosphere generate distinct morphology. When tested an electrocatalyst oxygen evolution (OER), exhibit overpotential 330 mV current density 10 mA cm?2 Tafel slope 59.0 dec-1, higher than those oxide (480 113 dec-1) (410 61.3 dec-1). Post-OER analysis by XPS reveals that high activity catalyst originates from existence Mn4+/Mn3+ Co2+/Co3+ redox couples formation metal oxyhydroxide species on its surface. The proposed self-sacrificial templating strategy will useful guidance future construction inorganic morphology energy storage conversion