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Reflection Optical Imaging to Study Oxygen Evolution Reactions

Journal Article · · Journal of the Electrochemical Society

Discovery of high-efficiency water-splitting catalysts is critical for clean hydrogen fuel generation. Quantitative and reliable chemical imaging methods can play a crucial role in providing critical catalyst efficiency information for materials development and screening. Here, we developed a reflection optical imaging method to map the performance of transition metal oxide catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The generated high concentration of oxygen in the electrolyte will decrease the refractive index of the solutions near the electrode and change the reflectivity of optical images. We successfully imaged and measured the OER on cobalt oxide, and the localized current density and overpotential distribution maps have been extracted. The oxidation and reduction of cobalt oxide can be imaged with our reflection optical imaging method as well. These maps showed that the catalytic activities are quite different at different locations, and some regions showed much higher activities. This is due to the non-uniformity created by the catalyst synthesis process and demonstrates the importance of using the optical imaging method to map the localized catalytic efficiency. In addition, the NiFe alloy’s OER catalytic activities have been studied as well. The proposed reflection optical imaging method could find many applications in catalyst activity measurement and screening.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (United States); Howard Univ., Washington, DC (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
DOE Contract Number:
FE0031704; FE0032092
OSTI ID:
1980881
Journal Information:
Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Vol. 169, Issue 5; ISSN 0013-4651
Publisher:
IOP Publishing
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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