Oxygen Evolution on Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: The Impact of Crystallinity and Size on the Overpotential

Zhuang, Zhongbin; Giles, Stephen A.; Jenness, Glen R.; Abbasi, Reza; Chen, Xi; Wang, Bo; Vlachos, Dionisios G.; Yan, Yushan

doi:10.1149/1945-7111/abef47

Oxygen Evolution on Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: The Impact of Crystallinity and Size on the Overpotential

Journal Article · Sun Feb 28 23:00:00 EST 2021 · Journal of the Electrochemical Society

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/abef47· OSTI ID:1850663

Zhuang, Zhongbin ^[1]; Giles, Stephen A.; Jenness, Glen R.; ; Chen, Xi; Wang, Bo; Vlachos, Dionisios G.;

OSTI

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a critical reaction in electrolysis and photoelectrolysis of water to generate and store clean energy. Therefore, the development of low-cost and efficient electrocatalysts for the OER is of great scientific and technological importance. Although promising iron oxide-based electrocatalysts have been recently developed for the OER, an in-depth experimental and theoretical analysis of the OER mechanism on iron oxide-based electrocatalysts is still needed to provide guidelines to optimize the performance of iron oxide-based electrocatalysts further. To address this need, we synthesized a series of monodisperse iron oxide nanoparticles to analyze their intrinsic OER activities. Using nanoparticles of the same size but different crystallinity, we show that amorphous iron oxide nanoparticles have better OER activity than crystalline ones. The size effect studies further revealed that the edge/defect sites are the active sites for the OER. Density functional theory calculations demonstrated that the edge/defect sites provide bridge sites to adsorb OER intermediates, resulting in low OER overpotential. These calculations confirm that the high OER activity of amorphous nanoparticles results from a high concentration of defect sites on their surface. These results provide novel strategies to increase the performance of iron oxide-based and likely other oxide-based OER electrocatalysts.

Research Organization:: Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

DOE Contract Number:: SC0001004; AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1850663

Journal Information:: Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Journal Name: Journal of the Electrochemical Society Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 168; ISSN 0013-4651

Publisher:: IOP Publishing - The Electrochemical Society

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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