Electrosynthesis of NiP nanospheres for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution from a neutral aqueous solution.

Due to the "ligand effect" and "ensemble effect", incorporating phosphorus into nickel metal is a promising strategy to prepare an electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, uniform NiP nanospheres are deposited on electrode substrates by a simple and fast electrosynthesis method. As expected, the NiP nanospheres can act as an excellent HER catalyst in a neutral buffer solution. It requires a low overpotential of 230 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm, and the stability has been proven to be outstanding by long-term electrolysis.