Boosting the Performance of the Nickel Anode in the Oxygen Evolution Reaction by Simple Electrochemical Activation

Tatsuya Shinagawa; Marcus Tze-Kiat Ng; Kazuhiro Takanabe

doi:10.1002/anie.201701642

Boosting the Performance of the Nickel Anode in the Oxygen Evolution Reaction by Simple Electrochemical Activation

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Apr 24;56(18):5061-5065. doi: 10.1002/anie.201701642. Epub 2017 Mar 27.

Authors

Tatsuya Shinagawa¹, Marcus Tze-Kiat Ng¹, Kazuhiro Takanabe¹

Affiliation

¹ King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC) and Physical Sciences and Engineering Division (PSE), 4700 KAUST, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.

PMID: 28345220
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201701642

Abstract

The development of cost-effective and active water-splitting electrocatalysts that work at mild pH is an essential step towards the realization of sustainable energy and material circulation in our society. Its success requires a drastic improvement in the kinetics of the anodic half-reaction of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which determines the overall system efficiency to a large extent. A simple electrochemical protocol has been developed to activate Ni electrodes, by which a stable NiOOH phase was formed, which could weakly bind to alkali-metal cations. The electrochemically activated (ECA) Ni electrode reached a current of 10 mA at <1.40 V vs. the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) at practical operation temperatures (>75 °C) and a mild pH of ca. 10 with excellent stability (>24 h), greatly surpassing that of the state-of-the-art NiFeO_x electrodes under analogous conditions. Water electrolysis was demonstrated with ECA-Ni and NiMo, which required an iR-free overall voltage of only 1.44 V to reach 10 mA cm_geo^-2 .

Keywords: electrochemistry; energy conversion; heterogeneous catalysis; oxygen evolution; water splitting.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't