Journal
ACS CATALYSIS
Volume 12, Issue 9, Pages 5174-5184Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.1c05951
Keywords
oxygen evolution reaction; iridium oxide; X-ray absorption spectroscopy; operando spectroscopy; electrolysis; electrocatalysis
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Funding
- German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF] [13XP5023C]
- Humboldt Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
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Creating active and stable electrodes is crucial for efficient and durable electrolyzers. This study investigates the factors determining the activity and catalyst dissolution in electrode structures. The researchers found that both surface and near-surface deprotonation play a significant role in the performance of the catalyst.
Creating active and stable electrodes is an essential step toward efficient and durable electrolyzers. To achieve this goal, understanding what aspects of the electrode structure dictate activity and catalyst dissolution is key. Here, we investigate these aspects by studying trends in the activity, stability, and operando structure of iridium oxides during the oxygen evolution reaction. Using operando X-ray photoelectron and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, we determined the near-surface structure of oxides ranging from amorphous to crystalline during the reaction. We show that applying oxygen evolution potentials universally yields deprotonated mu(2)-O moieties and a mu(1)-O/mu(1)-OH mixture, with universal deprotonation energetics but in different amounts. This quantitative difference mainly results from variations in deprotonation depth: surface deprotonation for crystalline IrO2 versus near-surface deprotonation for semicrystalline and amorphous IrOx. We argue that both surface deprotonation and subsurface deprotonation modify the barrier for the oxygen evolution and Ir dissolution reactions, thus playing an important role in catalyst performance.
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