Iridium-based double perovskites for efficient water oxidation in acid media.

Oscar Diaz-Morales,Patricia J Kooyman,Stefan Raaijman,W T Fu,Jorge Gascon,Marc T M Koper,Ruud Kortlever,Tim Wezendonk

doi:10.1038/ncomms12363

Oscar Diaz-Morales, Patricia J Kooyman + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12363

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Abstract

The development of active, cost-effective and stable oxygen-evolving catalysts is one of the major challenges for solar-to-fuel conversion towards sustainable energy generation. Iridium oxide exhibits the best available compromise between catalytic activity and stability in acid media, but it is prohibitively expensive for large-scale applications. Therefore, preparing oxygen-evolving catalysts with lower amounts of the scarce but active and stable iridium is an attractive avenue to overcome this economical constraint. Here we report on a class of oxygen-evolving catalysts based on iridium double perovskites which contain 32 wt% less iridium than IrO2 and yet exhibit a more than threefold higher activity in acid media. According to recently suggested benchmarking criteria, the iridium double perovskites are the most active catalysts for oxygen evolution in acid media reported until now, to the best of our knowledge, and exhibit similar stability to IrO2.

Highlights

The development of active, cost-effective and stable oxygen-evolving catalysts is one of the major challenges for solar-to-fuel conversion towards sustainable energy generation
Since iridium-based OER catalysts are well suited to work in the acid environment of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysers, this work explores the versatility of complex oxides to develop a class of catalysts for the OER in acid media
We report a family of catalysts based on iridium double perovskites, which contain three times less iridium and yet exhibit a more than threefold higher activity per cm[2] of real surface area for OER in acid media compared with IrO2, with similar stability

Summary

Introduction

The development of active, cost-effective and stable oxygen-evolving catalysts is one of the major challenges for solar-to-fuel conversion towards sustainable energy generation. The group of Suntivich[9] reported that the SrIrO3 simple perovskite exhibits higher OER activity than iridium oxide in alkaline media (0.1 M KOH).

Results

Conclusion