Due to its high electrical conductivity and platinum-like electronic structure, molybdenum phosphide (MoP) has attracted extensive attention as a potential catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) by water splitting. Nevertheless, in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the electrocatalytic performance of MoP did not achieve satisfactory results. Therefore, novel nitrogen-doped carbon-encapsulated La-doped MoP nanoparticles (La-MoP@N/C) are synthesized, which show outstanding durability and electrocatalytic activity in both HER and OER. Detailed structural characterization and calculations confirm that La doping not only effectively adjusts the electron density around Mo and P atoms, accelerates the adsorption and desorption processes, but also increases the number of active sites. Low overpotentials of 113 and 388 mV for HER and OER at 10 mA cm−2 are achieved with the optimized La0.025-Mo0.975P@N/C. Furthermore, the two-electrode electrolyzer assembled with La0.025-Mo0.975P@N/C also presents impressive water splitting performance. This study indicates that rare earth doping can be used as an efficient strategy to control the local electronic structure of phosphides precisely, which can also be extended to other electrocatalysts.

中文翻译：

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通过镧掺杂对磷化钼进行电子结构定制，以实现高效的整体水分解


由于其高导电性和类铂电子结构，磷化钼 （MoP） 作为水分解析氢反应 （HER） 的潜在催化剂而受到广泛关注。然而，在析氧反应 （OER） 中，MoP 的电催化性能并未达到令人满意的结果。因此，合成了新型氮掺杂碳包埋的 La-掺杂 MoP 纳米颗粒 （La-MoP@N/C），在 HER 和 OER 中均表现出优异的耐久性和电催化活性。详细的结构表征和计算证实，La 掺杂不仅有效地调整了 Mo 和 P 原子周围的电子密度，加速了吸附和解吸过程，而且还增加了活性位点的数量。使用优化的 La0.025-Mo0.975P@N/C 可实现 10 mA cm-2 时 HER 和 OER 的 113 和 388 mV 低过电位。此外，用 La0.025-Mo0.975P@N/C 组装的双电极电解槽也表现出令人印象深刻的分解水性能。这项研究表明，稀土掺杂可以用作精确控制磷化物局部电子结构的有效策略，也可以扩展到其他电催化剂。