Ultrafast Preparation of Nonequilibrium FeNi Spinels by Magnetic Induction Heating for Unprecedented Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalysis

Bingzhang Lu; Qiming Liu; Chunyang Wang; Zaheer Masood; David J Morris; Forrest Nichols; Rene Mercado; Peng Zhang; Qingfeng Ge; Huolin L Xin; Shaowei Chen

doi:10.34133/2022/9756983

Ultrafast Preparation of Nonequilibrium FeNi Spinels by Magnetic Induction Heating for Unprecedented Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalysis

Research (Wash D C). 2022 Jun 1:2022:9756983. doi: 10.34133/2022/9756983. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois 62901, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Dalhousie University, 6274 Coburg Road, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 4R2.

Abstract

Carbon-supported nanocomposites are attracting particular attention as high-performance, low-cost electrocatalysts for electrochemical water splitting. These are mostly prepared by pyrolysis and hydrothermal procedures that are time-consuming (from hours to days) and typically difficult to produce a nonequilibrium phase. Herein, for the first time ever, we exploit magnetic induction heating-quenching for ultrafast production of carbon-FeNi spinel oxide nanocomposites (within seconds), which exhibit an unprecedentedly high performance towards oxygen evolution reaction (OER), with an ultralow overpotential of only +260 mV to reach the high current density of 100 mA cm^-2. Experimental and theoretical studies show that the rapid heating and quenching process (ca. 10³ K s^-1) impedes the Ni and Fe phase segregation and produces a Cl-rich surface, both contributing to the remarkable catalytic activity. Results from this study highlight the unique advantage of ultrafast heating/quenching in the structural engineering of functional nanocomposites to achieve high electrocatalytic performance towards important electrochemical reactions.