Scale-Up Preparation of Flexible Ni–W–P@Fiber Cloth Electrode for Boosting Overall Water Electrosplitting

The structural design and large-size preparation of high-activity, low-cost, and flexible electrodes are urgently needed for hydrogen production via water electrolysis. Herein, using facile and short-time electroless plating, the W-doped Ni–P (Ni–W–P) alloys were confined at a hydrophilic fiber cloth (HFC), acting as a flexible bifunctional electrode for overall water splitting. The HFC is endowed with a customizable shape, large specific surface area, and flexible property, which is proposed as a substrate. The Ni–W–P alloys were evenly and tightly coated on HFC, constructing a conductive network and a continuous electron transfer path. The self-supported Ni–W–P@HFC shows the low overpotentials of 180 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and 380 mV for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in 1 M KOH electrolyte to gain a large current density of 100 mA cm–2. The Tafel slopes were as low as 58.9 mV dec–1 for HER and 88.3 mV dec–1 for OER. The flexible Ni–W–P@HFC electrode required only 1.81 V to achieve 100 mA cm–2 for overall water splitting and continuously worked over 6 days. DFT calculation reveals that the introduction of W atom in Ni–P alloys induces the redistribution of electron density, optimizes the adsorption energy of intermediates, and reduces the energy barrier. The large-scale preparation of Ni–W–P@HFC and solar energy-driven overall water splitting make the flexible electrode to show promising application prospects in the field of clean energy system