Electrochemical water splitting has attracted great interest because of the growing demand for sustainable energy and increasing concerns for the environment. We present a facile strategy to design the three-dimensional (3D) urchin-like sphere arrays Co3O4 as an effective bifunctional catalyst for electrochemical water splitting. The 3D urchin-like Co3O4 was directly grown on Ni foam by a hydrothermal reaction and annealing treatment at a low temperature. This process offers several advantages including facile synthesis, binder-free, and low cost. The 3D urchin-like Co3O4 as a catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction exhibits a low onset potential (-130 mV vs. RHE) and good cycling stability in an alkaline electrolyte. When urchin-like Co3O4 is used as a catalyst for oxygen evolution reaction, the onset potential is at 1.46 V (vs. RHE) with a low overpotential of only 230 mV. The good catalytic activity can be attributed to the unique urchin-like nanostructure, abundant mesopores, and low charge-transfer resistance (compared with Co3O4 NPs). In addition, H-2 and O-2 generation was performed using Co3O4 as both cathode and anode catalysts with a potential of 1.64 V to reach a current density of 10 mA cm(-2). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.