Bimetal nickel–cobalt phosphide directly grown on commercial graphite substrate by the one-step electrodeposition as efficient electrocatalytic electrode

It is challenging to find a method to obtain a catalyst with low cost and efficient multifunctional performances.Herein, in order to obtain the electrode with high-performance water splitting and non-enzymatic glucose detection, the commercial graphite sheet(GS) with excellent durability and electroconductivity was used as substrate material, and the non-noble ternary component Ni–Co–P catalyst with hierarchical architecture was fabricated on GS via a co-electrodeposition. The catalyst only required low overpotentials of 44.6, 76.5 and 49 m V to drive the current density of 10 m A cmalongside with the smaller Tafel slopes of 39.2, 44.8 and 112 m V decfor hydrogen evolution reaction(HER) in 1.0 M KOH, 0.5 M HSOand 1.0 M PBS solution,respectively. For oxygen evolution reaction(OER), the catalyst demonstrated a low overpotential of 304 m V to achieve the current density of 20 m A cmwith excellent Tafel slope of 89.8 m V decin alkaline solution.Furthermore, the Ni–Co–P/GS electrode serving as non-enzymatic glucose sensor exhibited the superior electrocatalytic activity with an ultrahigh sensitivity of 7400 μA m Mcm, low detection limit of 0.425 μM(S/N = 3), and wide linear range(1–1200 μM).