Boosting oxygen evolution reaction by activation of lattice-oxygen sites in layered Ruddlesden-Popper oxide

Yinlong Zhu, Hassan A. Tahini, Zhiwei Hu, Yichun Yin, Qian Lin, Hainan Sun, Yijun Zhong, Yubo Chen, Feifei Zhang, Hong-Ji Lin, Chien-Te Chen, Wei Zhou, Xiwang Zhang, Sean C. Smith, Zongping Shao, Huanting Wang

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73 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Emerging anionic redox chemistry presents new opportunities for enhancing oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity considering that lattice-oxygen oxidation mechanism (LOM) could bypass thermodynamic limitation of conventional metal-ion participation mechanism. Thus, finding an effective method to activate lattice-oxygen in metal oxides is highly attractive for designing efficient OER electrocatalysts. Here, we discover that the lattice-oxygen sites in Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) crystal structure can be activated, leading to a new class of extremely active OER catalyst. As a proof-of-concept, the RP Sr3(Co0.8Fe0.1Nb0.1)2O7-δ (RP-SCFN) oxide exhibits outstanding OER activity (eg, 334 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 0.1 M KOH), which is significantly higher than that of the simple SrCo0.8Fe0.1Nb0.1O3-δ perovskite and benchmark RuO2. Combined density functional theory and X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies demonstrate that RP-SCFN follows the LOM under OER condition, and the activated lattice oxygen sites triggered by high covalency of metal-oxygen bonds are the origin of the high catalytic activity. (Figure presented.).

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere12021
Number of pages9
JournalEcoMat
Volume2
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2020

Keywords

  • anion activation
  • lattice-oxygen sites
  • oxygen evolution reaction
  • Ruddlesden-Popper oxide
  • structure engineering

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