Sphere shaped Mo- doped transition metal oxide as electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction in alkaline medium

Abstract

Designing and development of the low cost and efficient transition metal based electrocatalyst for the electrochemical water splitting is a challenging task because in general, costly noble metals are used as electrocatalyst for water splitting reactions. Herein Mo dopped ferric oxide (MFO) was synthesized by hydrothermal method followed by the heat treatment and characterized by using different techniques such as XRD, FESEM, HRTEM, FTIR, EDS, M-S plot and BET etc. The electrocatalytic properties of ferric oxide (FO) and MFO towards water splitting in alkaline medium were studied and compared with RuO2. The prepared material (MFO) exhibited higher electrocatalytic activity towards the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in the alkaline medium as compared to ferric oxide (FO). The overpotential for MFO at 10 mA/cm2 current density was found as 359 mV vs. RHE and Tafel slop value was found as 80 mV/ decade. The investigated MFO also offered high value of the exchange current density and large number of active sites (8.6568 *10−8 mol) as well as large BET surface area (179.41 m2/g).). Thus MFO acts as efficient low cost electrocatalyst towards the oxygen evolution reaction to produce the molecular oxygen for the renewable energy production.