A selective and efficient precious metal-free electrocatalyst for chlorine evolution reaction: An experimental and computational study

Chlor-Alkali (CA) process benefits from chlorine evolution reaction (ClER) over various precious metal oxides electrocatalysts. This study introduces a novel precious metal-free Ti0.35V0.35Sn0.25Sb0.05-oxide electrocatalyst which selectively conducts the reaction pathway towards ClER with a high faradaic current efficiency of similar to 88%. The electrocatalyst and its electrochemical activity were scrutinized by various techniques such as field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and linear scanning voltammetry (LSV). A decent overpotential difference (DE) between oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and chlorine evolution reactions (ClER) was attributed to the reasonable design of the electrocatalyst composite. Namely, the geometric structure and surface properties of the synthesized electrocatalyst, as well as the associated electrochemical selectivity was tuned by incorporation of vanadium pentoxide, antimony and tin oxide in the electrocatalyst material. In addition, the electronic properties of the synthesized electrocatalysts including band structure and the corresponding electron density were studied by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

Automated summary

This study introduces a novel precious metal-free Ti0.35V0.35Sn0.25Sb0.05-oxide electrocatalyst that selectively conducts the reaction pathway towards chlorine evolution reaction with a high faradaic current efficiency of around 88%. The electrocatalyst was scrutinized by various techniques, showing a decent overpotential difference between oxygen evolution reaction and chlorine evolution reactions. The geometric structure and surface properties of the synthesized electrocatalyst were tuned by incorporating vanadium pentoxide, antimony, and tin oxide.