Enhanced Acidic Water Oxidation by Dynamic Migration of Oxygen Species at the Ir/Nb2 O5-x Catalyst/Support Interfaces

Zhaoping Shi; Ji Li; Jiadong Jiang; Yibo Wang; Xian Wang; Yang Li; Liting Yang; Yuyi Chu; Jingsen Bai; Jiahao Yang; Jing Ni; Ying Wang; Lijuan Zhang; Zheng Jiang; Changpeng Liu; Junjie Ge; Wei Xing

doi:10.1002/anie.202212341

Enhanced Acidic Water Oxidation by Dynamic Migration of Oxygen Species at the Ir/Nb₂ O_5-x Catalyst/Support Interfaces

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Dec 23;61(52):e202212341. doi: 10.1002/anie.202212341. Epub 2022 Nov 24.

Authors

Zhaoping Shi^{1

2}, Ji Li^{3

4}, Jiadong Jiang⁵, Yibo Wang^{1

2}, Xian Wang^{1

2}, Yang Li^{1

2}, Liting Yang^{1

2}, Yuyi Chu^{1

2}, Jingsen Bai^{1

2}, Jiahao Yang^{1

2}, Jing Ni^{1

2}, Ying Wang⁶, Lijuan Zhang^{3

7}, Zheng Jiang^{4

7}, Changpeng Liu^{1

2}, Junjie Ge^{1

2}, Wei Xing^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, 130022, P. R. China.
² School of Applied Chemistry and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P. R. China.
³ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201204, P. R. China.
⁴ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, P. R. China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Physics and Technology for Advanced Batteries, Ministry of Education, College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, P. R. China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, P. R. China.
⁷ Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Zhangjiang National Lab, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, 201204, China.

PMID: 36254795
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202212341

Abstract

Catalyst/support interaction plays a vital role in catalysis towards acidic oxygen evolution (OER), and the performance reinforcement is currently interpreted by either strain or electron donation effect. We herein report that these views are insufficient, where the dynamic evolution of the interface under potential bias must be considered. Taking Nb₂ O_5-x supported iridium (Ir/Nb₂ O_5-x ) as a model catalyst, we uncovered the dynamic migration of oxygen species between IrO_x and Nb₂ O_5-x during OER. Direct spectroscopic evidence combined with theoretical computation suggests these migrations not only regulate the in situ Ir structure towards boosted activity, but also suppress its over-oxidation via spontaneously delivering excessive oxygen from IrO_x to Nb₂ O_5-x . The optimized Ir/Nb₂ O_5-x thus demonstrated exceptional performance in scalable water electrolyzers, i.e., only need 1.839 V to attain 3 A cm^-2 (surpassing the DOE 2025 target), and no activity decay during a 2000 h test at 2 A cm^-2 .

Keywords: Acidic OER; Dynamic Catalyst/Support Interface; High Performance PEMWE; Stability.

Abstract

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