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Research Article

Boosting acidic water oxidation performance by constructing arrays-like nanoporous IrxRu1−xO2 with abundant atomic steps

Junjie Li1,2,§, Zan Lian3,§, Qiang Li4, Zhongchang Wang2, Lifeng Liu2, Francis Leonard Deepak2, Yanping Liu5, Bo Li3(), Junyuan Xu6(), Zuxin Chen2,7()
CAS Key Laboratory of Functional Materials and Devices for Special Environments, Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), Braga 4715-330, Portugal
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan Key Laboratory for Super-microstructure and Ultrafast Process, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Laboratory of Advanced Spectro-electrochemistry and Li-ion Batteries, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China
Institute of Semiconductors, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China

§ Junjie Li and Zan Lian contributed equally to this work.

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High performance IrxRu1–xO2 oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts with abundant atomic steps have been fabricated by an alloy-spinning electrochemical activation route.

Abstract

The fabrication of electrocatalysts with high activity and acid stability for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an urgent need, yet extremely challenging. Here, we report the design and successful fabrication of a high performance self-supported cogwheel arrays-like nanoporous IrxRu1−xO2 catalyst with abundant atomic steps for acidic OER using a facile alloy-spinning-electrochemical activation method that allows large-scale fabrication. The obtained IrxRu1−xO2 catalysts merely need overpotentials of 211 and 295 mV to deliver catalytic current densities of 10 and 300 mA·cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4, respectively, and can sustain constant OER electrolysis for at least 140 h at a high current density of 300 mA·cm−2. Further density functional theory (DFT) calculations uncover that such high intrinsic activities mainly originate from the largely exposed high-index atomic step planes, which markedly lower the limiting potential of the rate-determining step (RDS) of OER. These findings provide an insight into the exploration of high performance electrocatalysts, and open up an avenue for further developing the state-of-the-art Ir and/or Ru-based catalysts for large-scale practical applications.

Keywords

oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrolysisnanoporous structureIrxRu1−xO2defectsatomic steps

Electronic Supplementary Material

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Nano Research
Volume 15 Issue 7,
July 2022
Pages 5933-5939
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-022-4253-2
Cite this article:
Li J, Lian Z, Li Q, et al. Boosting acidic water oxidation performance by constructing arrays-like nanoporous IrxRu1−xO2 with abundant atomic steps. Nano Research, 2022, 15(7): 5933-5939. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4253-2
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