Water splitting is an efficient strategy to produce purity hydrogen and convert intermittent electricity from renewable wind and solar sources. In this work, dense NiMoO4 micropillars arrays (MPAs) were in-situ grown on nickel foam (NF) through facile hydrothermal method, then the NiMoO4/NF were converted into NiMoO4-P/NF and NiFe/NiMoO4/NF via phosphating and electrodeposition method, respectively. The NiMoO4-P/NF electrode required small overpotentials of 34 mV@10 mA cm(-2) and 130 mV@100 mA cm(-2) for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The NiFe/NiMoO4/NF electrode exhibited excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity with overpotentials of 210 mV@10 mA cm(-2) and 300 mV@100 mA cm(-2). The overall water splitting using the anode-cathode couple of NiFe/NiMoO4/NF parallel to NiMoO4-P/NF only consumes low voltages of 1.47 V@10 mA cm(-2) for 100 h and 1.66 V@100 mA cm(-2) for 50 h in 1 M KOH. The electronic modification and the well-designed hierarchical structure contribute the high energy-efficient and stabile overall water splitting. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.