Mesoporous phosphides electrocatalysts for water splitting

Electrolysis of water is a promising pathway to achieve clean and sustainable hydrogen production, but its efficiency is highly dependent on the activity of catalysts. Precious metal-based materials are currently recognized as the most active electrolytic water catalysts. However, the low reserves and high prices severely limit their large-scale industrial applications. Therefore, researchers have focused on developing low-cost, resource rich, efficient, and stable non precious metal catalysts nowadays. Among them, mesoporous transition metal phosphides (meso-TMPs) have attracted much attention due to their structural advantages and electronic properties, such as high conductivity, high active site density, and favorable mass transfer channels. Herein, we systematically review the representative research progress of meso-TMPs electrolytic water catalysts, summarize the synthesis methods, focus on the structure-activity relationship between the modulation of morphology, elemental composition, atomic coordination environment and electronic structure and catalytic activity. Finally, this paper looks forward to the future development direction of meso-TMPs electrocatalysts. Overall, this article aims to provide a new perspective on the development of non-precious metal efficient catalysts in water electrolysis.