Understanding activity trends in electrochemical water oxidation to form hydrogen peroxide

Xinjian Shi; Samira Siahrostami; Guo-Ling Li; Yirui Zhang; Pongkarn Chakthranont; Felix Studt; Thomas F Jaramillo; Xiaolin Zheng; Jens K Nørskov

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00585-6

Understanding activity trends in electrochemical water oxidation to form hydrogen peroxide

Nat Commun. 2017 Sep 26;8(1):701. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00585-6.

Authors

Xinjian Shi^{1

2}, Samira Siahrostami¹, Guo-Ling Li^{3

4}, Yirui Zhang^{2

5}, Pongkarn Chakthranont¹, Felix Studt^{3

6

7}, Thomas F Jaramillo¹, Xiaolin Zheng^{8

9}, Jens K Nørskov^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
³ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA.
⁴ School of Physics and Engineering, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, 471023, China.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
⁶ Institute of Catalysis Research and Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76344, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
⁷ Institute for Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany.
⁸ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. xlzheng@stanford.edu.
⁹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. xlzheng@stanford.edu.
¹⁰ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. norskov@stanford.edu.
¹¹ SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA. norskov@stanford.edu.

Abstract

Electrochemical production of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) from water oxidation could provide a very attractive route to locally produce a chemically valuable product from an abundant resource. Herein using density functional theory calculations, we predict trends in activity for water oxidation towards H₂O₂ evolution on four different metal oxides, i.e., WO₃, SnO₂, TiO₂ and BiVO₄. The density functional theory predicted trend for H₂O₂ evolution is further confirmed by our experimental measurements. Moreover, we identify that BiVO₄ has the best H₂O₂ generation amount of those oxides and can achieve a Faraday efficiency of about 98% for H₂O₂ production.Producing hydrogen peroxide via electrochemical oxidation of water is an attractive route to this valuable product. Here the authors theoretically and experimentally investigate hydrogen peroxide production activity trends for a range of metal oxides and identify the optimal bias ranges for high Faraday efficiencies.

Publication types

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