Water splitting by an electrochemical method to generate the hydrogen gas is an economic and green approach to resolve looming energy and environmental crisis. Designing a composite electrocatalyst having integrated multi-channel charge separation, robust stability and low-cost facile scalability could be considered to address the issue of electrochemical hydrogen evolution. Herein, we report a superhydrophilic free-noble bimetallic TiO2/Ni2P coated on graphitic polyacrylonitrile carbon fibers (g-C/TiO2/Ni2P) using facile hydrothermal followed by phosphorylation. In an aqueous-based route the PAN is dissolved in water in the presence of ZnCl2, followed by wet spinning to prepare saleable PAN/ZnCl2 fibers. The nitrogen-contained porous graphitic carbon fibers are prepared via pyrolysis of PAN/ZnCl2 fibers, now ZnCl2 acts as a volatile porogen to form porous matrix structures. Finally, the as-prepared graphitic carbon fibers are electrochemically activated by incorporating TiO2/Ni2P active sites. The materials formed in this work show an excellent electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction. The as-synthesized g-C/TiO2/Ni2P catalyst show less overpotential, its electrocatalytic activity is improved and its efficiency is better than the commercial Pt/C catalyst. In the current density of -10 mA/cm2, the g-C/TiO2/Ni2P catalyst show an overpotential of 55 mV, while the commercial Pt/C catalyst show an overpotential of 77 mV. Our work is a facile aqueous scalable route with no need to noble metals that can be considered as a potential alternative for the commercial Pt/C catalyst.
