A high-efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution and methanol oxidation reactions prepared by a facile and scale-up method

Abstract

Developing the facile, universal and scale-up method to prepare electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) is crucial for the high-efficient hydrogen production through water splitting. Herein, we load the CeO2 nanoparticles on the various metal foams by a very simple and scalable impregnation method. Taking iron-nickel foam (INF) as an example, we can obtain a high-efficient OER and MOR electrocatalyst of CeO2 @INF-0.6. CeO2 @INF-0.6 shows the superior electrocatalytic activities toward both OER and MOR with the oxidation potentials of 1.52 V and 1.47 V at 100 mA cm−2, respectively. This can be ascribed to the CeO2 @INF-0.6 with strong adsorption and fast conversion ability of OH- in the alkaline electrolyte. CeO2 @INF-0.6 also has good stability and selectivity in MOR-assisted alkaline water splitting, and the Faraday efficiency of formate is up to 99.2% at 1.42 V (vs. RHE). In addition, the Na+ and Cl- ions with high concentrations almost have the negligible effects on the OER and MOR activities of our CeO2 @INF-0.6 in the alkaline solution. This indicates that using CeO2 @INF-0.6 as anode for seawater electrolysis not only can greatly reduce the energy consumption, but produce the value-added anode product of formate.