am0c00389_si_001.pdf (14.73 MB)
Ce-Doped IrO2 Electrocatalysts with Enhanced Performance for Water Oxidation in Acidic Media
journal contribution
posted on 2020-08-06, 22:20 authored by Yahui Wang, Shaoyun Hao, Xiangnan Liu, Qiqi Wang, Zhiwei Su, Lecheng Lei, Xingwang ZhangElectrocatalytic
water splitting in acidic media based on a proton-exchange
membrane (PEM) is a promising technique for the large-scale production
of hydrogen. However, developing electrocatalysts with high activity
and excellent stability for an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in
acidic media is still a big challenge. Herein, a Cex-IrO2 catalyst supported on N-doped porous carbon
(NPC) was developed via doping Ce into IrO2 nanoparticles.
The Cex-IrO2 nanoparticles
were uniformly distributed on NPC due to the high surface area. The
optimized Ce0.2-IrO2@NPC delivers a low overpotential
of 224 mV and excellent stability of 100 h in 0.5 M H2SO4 at 10 mA cm–2. Density functional theory
(DFT) calculations indicated that the introduction of Ce could modify
the electronic structure of IrO2, decreasing the energy
barrier of the rate-determining step for OER and enhancing the electrochemical
OER performance. Our work opens up a new way of developing anodic
electrocatalysts, which can be stably applied in acidic media.