Fe-based amorphous alloy wire as highly efficient and stable electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction of water splitting

Abstract

The slow kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) leads to low energy conversion efficiency during water electrolysis, thus it is very important to develop efficient and economical electrocatalysts. With high surface energy and rich active centers, amorphous alloys show excellent potential as self-supporting oxygen evolution catalysts for water splitting. In this work, (Fe0.8Ni0.2)71Mo5P12C10B2 amorphous alloy wire was successfully prepared, and after 5 h immersed in 0.5 mol/L HNO3, the wire surface was covered by the block metallic oxide. At a current density of 10 mA/cm2 in an alkaline electrolyte, the electrochemical results show that the overpotential is only 254 mV and the Tafel slope is 49 mV/dec. After the 194 h stability test, its oxygen evolution performance is even comparable to the commercial RuO2, which has been proven to have excellent electrochemical stability and low preparation cost. The highly efficient catalytic performance mainly originated from the synergistic effect of multi-metal elements and the unique crack surface characteristics which expose more active sites. This work provides new insight into low-metal-cost materials for efficient and durable OER electrocatalysts and their industrial applications in the future.