Simple room temperature synthesis of porous nickel phosphate foams for electrocatalytic ethanol oxidation

The simple and eco-friendly fabrication of non-noble metal catalyst is of great importance for sustainable energy production from alcohol. Herein, we report the new synthetic route for the preparation of nickel phosphate nanostructure through simple co-precipitation method. We studied the effect of annealing temperature ranging from 500 °C to 1100 °C on the electrocatalyst for ethanol electro-oxidation. In addition, we demonstrate that the resulting nickel phosphate materials can serve as efficient transition metal electrocatalyst for the ethanol oxidation under alkaline condition. In particular, the nickel phosphate annealed at 900 °C (NP-900) affords higher current density of 1.2 mA cm^{− 2} at the low potential of 0.7 mV, demonstrating great catalytic stability as well as good cyclability for 1000 cycles giving about 92% faradaic yield towards the ethanol.