Tensile Strain-Mediated Spinel Ferrites Enable Superior Oxygen Evolution Activity

Yaotian Yan; Jinghuang Lin; Keke Huang; Xiaohang Zheng; Liang Qiao; Shude Liu; Jian Cao; Seong Chan Jun; Yusuke Yamauchi; Junlei Qi

doi:10.1021/jacs.3c08598

Tensile Strain-Mediated Spinel Ferrites Enable Superior Oxygen Evolution Activity

J Am Chem Soc. 2023 Nov 8;145(44):24218-24229. doi: 10.1021/jacs.3c08598. Epub 2023 Oct 24.

Authors

Yaotian Yan¹, Jinghuang Lin², Keke Huang¹, Xiaohang Zheng¹, Liang Qiao³, Shude Liu⁴, Jian Cao¹, Seong Chan Jun⁵, Yusuke Yamauchi^{6

7

8}, Junlei Qi¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Welding and Joining, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China.
² Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering (IAPME), University of Macau, Taipa, 999078, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Materials Design and Quantum Simulation, College of Science, Changchun University, Changchun, 130022, China.
⁴ College of Textiles, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China.
⁵ School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, 120-749, South Korea.
⁶ Department of Materials Process Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8603, Japan.
⁷ Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
⁸ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, 03722, South Korea.

PMID: 37874900
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c08598

Abstract

Exploring efficient strategies to overcome the performance constraints of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts is vital for electrocatalytic applications such as H₂O splitting, CO₂ reduction, N₂ reduction, etc. Herein, tunable, wide-range strain engineering of spinel oxides, such as NiFe₂O₄, is proposed to enhance the OER activity. The lattice strain is regulated by interfacial thermal mismatch during the bonding process between thermally expanding NiFe₂O₄ nanoparticles and the nonexpanding carbon fiber substrate. The tensile lattice strain causes energy bands to flatten near the Fermi level, lowering e_g orbital occupancy, effectively increasing the number of electronic states near the Fermi level, and reducing the pseudoenergy gap. Consequently, the energy barrier of the rate-determining step for strained NiFe₂O₄ is reduced, achieving a low overpotential of 180 mV at 10 mA/cm². A total water decomposition voltage range of 1.52-1.56 V at 10 mA/cm² (without iR correction) was achieved in an asymmetric alkaline electrolytic cell with strained NiFe₂O₄ nanoparticles, and its robust stability was verified with a voltage retention of approximately 99.4% after 100 h. Furthermore, the current work demonstrates the universality of tuning OER performance with other spinel ferrite systems, including cobalt, manganese, and zinc ferrites.