High-performance anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer enabled by highly active oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysts: Synergistic effect of doping and heterostructure

Abstract

Anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers (AEM electrolyzers) have been demonstrated for efficient green hydrogen production. The primary advantage of AEM electrolyzers is replacing the noble metal catalysts with low-cost platinum group metal (PGM)-free catalysts. Despite some astonishing demonstrations of high-performance AEM electrolyzers [1–4], most of them suffer from lower energy efficiency due to the poor catalytic activity of PGM-free catalysts. Herein, to improve the performance of AEM electrolyzers, we developed a CeO2/CoFeCe-layered double hydroxide (LDH) heterostructure as the OER catalyst. The Ce doping modulates the electronic structures of CoFe-LDH while creating a CeO2/CoFeCe LDH interface, which dramatically improves the OER activity. The Ce doping synergizes with the CeO2/CoFeCe LDH interface to enable a high-performance AEM electrolyzer, achieving an exceptional current density of 2.7 A/cm2 at 1.8 Vcell. This work validates that AEM electrolyzers equipped with PGM-free OER catalysts can achieve comparable energy efficiency with proton exchange membrane water electrolyzers (PEM electrolyzers).