Hydrogen,regarded as a promising energy carrier to alleviate the current energy crisis,can be generated from hydro-gen evolution reaction(HER),whereas its efficiency is impeded by the activity of catalysts.Herein,effective strategies,such as strain and interfacial engineering,are imposed to tune the catalysis performance of novel two-dimensional(2D)phosphorus carbide(PC)layers using first-principle calculations.The findings show that P site in pristine monolayer PC(ML-PC)exhibits higher HER performance than C site.Intriguingly,constructing bilayer PC sheet(BL-PC)can change the coordinate configuration of P atom to form 3-coordination-P atom(3-co-P)and 4-coordination-P atom(4-co-P),and the original activity of 3-co-P site is higher than the 4-co-P site.When an external compressive strain is applied,the activity of the 4-co-P site is enhanced whereas the external strain can barely affect that of 3-co-P site.Interestingly,the graphene substrate enhances the overall activity of the BL-PC because the graphene substrate optimizes the AGH* value of 4-co-P site,although it can barely affect the HER activity of 3-co-P site and ML-PC.The desirable properties render 2D PC-based material promising candidates for HER catalysts and shed light on the wide utilization in electrocatalysis.