Ce Site in Amorphous Iron Oxyhydroxide Nanosheet toward Enhanced Electrochemical Water Oxidation.

Abstract

Iron oxyhydroxide has been considered an auspicious electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline water electrolysis due to its suitable electronic structure and abundant reserves. However, Fe-based materials seriously suffer from the tradeoff between activity and stability at a high current density above 100mA cm-2 . In this work, the Ce atom is introduced into the amorphous iron oxyhydroxide (i.e., CeFeOx Hy ) nanosheet to simultaneously improve the intrinsic electrocatalytic activity and stability for OER through regulating the redox property of iron oxyhydroxide. In particular, the Ce substitution leads to the distorted octahedral crystal structure of CeFeOx Hy , along with a regulated coordination site. The CeFeOx Hy electrode exhibits a low overpotential of 250mV at 100mA cm-2 with a small Tafel slope of 35.1 mVdec-1 . Moreover, the CeFeOx Hy electrode can continuously work for 300h at 100mA cm-2 . When applying the CeFeOx Hy nanosheet electrode as the anode and coupling it with the platinum mesh cathode, the cell voltage for overall water splitting can be lowered to 1.47V at 10mA cm-2 . This work offers a design strategy for highly active, low-cost, and durable material through interfacing high valent metals with earth-abundant oxides/hydroxides.