posted on 2020-03-18, 17:36authored bySivasankara
Rao Ede, T. K. Bijoy, S. Sam Sankar, P. Murugan, Subrata Kundu
The
production of hydrogen from ecofriendly renewable technologies like
water electrolysis and fuel cells involves oxygen evolution reaction
(OER), which plays a major role, but the slow kinetics of OER is a
bottleneck of commercialization of such technologies. Herein, we have
reported the formation of an efficient OER catalyst from SnCo(OH)6 (SCH) by leaching of Sn atoms during electrochemical OER
studies. According to density functional theory calculations, adsorption
of OH* species on Sn atoms is energetically more favorable than that
of Co atoms, and as a result, highly active CoOOH is generated by
leaching of Sn atoms from surface layers. We observed enhanced OER
performance with superior mass activity by blending SCH with activated
charcoal, which displays a low overpotential of 293 mV and higher
mass activity than that of pristine SCH. More importantly, it outperforms
Co(OH)2 and RuO2 having the same carbon composition
because of the formation of thermodynamically stable and amorphous
CoOOH on the surface of single-crystalline SCH and strong tethering
ability of activated charcoal.