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Galvanic displacement of Co with Rh boosts hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions in alkaline media

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Abstract

The growing energy crisis put an emphasis on the development of novel efficient energy conversion and storage systems. Here we show that surface modification of cobalt by a fast galvanic displacement with rhodium significantly affects the activity towards hydrogen (HER) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER) in alkaline media. After only 20 s of galvanic displacement, the HER overpotential is reduced by 0.16 V and OER overpotential by 0.06 V. This means that the predicted water splitting voltage is reduced from 2.03 V (clean Co anode and cathode) to 1.81 V at 10 mA cm−2 (Rh-exchanged Co electrode). During the galvanic displacement process, the surface roughness of the Co electrode does not suffer significant changes, which suggests an increase in the intrinsic catalytic activity. Density Functional Theory calculations show that the reactivity of the Rh-modified Co(0001) surface is modified compared to that of the clean Co(0001). In the case of HER, experimentally observed activity improvements are directly correlated to the weakening of the hydrogen-surface bond, confirming the beneficial role of Rh incorporation into the Co surface.

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Acknowledgements

The computations and data handling were enabled by resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at the National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) at Linköping University, partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through grant agreement No. 2018-05973.

Funding

This research was funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (PROMIS project RatioCAT), Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 451–03-68/2022–14/200146). S.V.M. and I.A.P. are indebted to the Research Fund of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, project F-190, for supporting this study.

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Author notes

  1. Bojana Nedić Vasiljević and Aleksandar Z. Jovanović contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Belgrade - Faculty of Physical Chemistry, Studentski trg 12-16, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia

    Bojana Nedić Vasiljević, Aleksandar Z. Jovanović, Slavko V. Mentus & Igor A. Pašti

  2. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Knez Mihailova 35, Belgrade, 11000, Serbia

    Slavko V. Mentus

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, School of Industrial Engineering and Management, KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, Brinellvägen 23, Stockholm, 100 44, Sweden

    Natalia V. Skorodumova

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  1. Bojana Nedić Vasiljević
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Nedić Vasiljević, B., Jovanović, A.Z., Mentus, S.V. et al. Galvanic displacement of Co with Rh boosts hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions in alkaline media. J Solid State Electrochem 27, 1877–1887 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-023-05374-4

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