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Low-cost high entropy alloy (HEA) for high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER)

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Abstract

Oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the key step involved both in water splitting devices and rechargeable metal-air batteries, and hence, there is an urgent need for a stable and low-cost material for efficient OER. In the present investigation, Co−Fe−Ga−Ni−Zn (CFGNZ) high entropy alloy (HEA) has been utilized as a low-cost electrocatalyst for OER. Herein, after cyclic voltammetry activation, CFGNZ-nanoparticles (NPs) are covered with oxidized surface and form high entropy (oxy) hydroxides (HEOs), exhibiting a low overpotential of 370 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA/cm2 with a small Tafel slope of 71 mV/dec. CFGNZ alloy has higher electrochemical stability in comparison to state-of-the art RuO2 electrocatalyst as no degradation has been observed up to 10 h of chronoamperometry. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies after 10 h of long-term chronoamperometry test showed no change in the crystal structure, which confirmed the high stability of CFGNZ. The density functional theory (DFT) based calculations show that the closeness of d(p)-band centers to the Fermi level (EF) plays a major role in determining active sites. This work highlights the tremendous potential of CFGNZ HEA for OER, which is the primary reaction involved in water splitting.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thanks SERB-DST for financial support to carry out this research. We would also like to thank the Imaging centre facilities at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur for TEM imaging. We acknowledge Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRC), IIT Mandi to provide the sophisticated instrumentation facilities. A. P., R. K., and A. K. S. acknowledge Materials Research Centre, Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, and Supercomputer Education and Research Centre for providing the computational facilities. A. P., R. K., and A. K. S. also acknowledge the support from the Institute of Eminence (IoE) MHRD grant of the Indian Institute of Science. N. K. K. acknowledges the Newton Fellowship award from the Royal Society UK (NIFR1191571). C. S. T. thanks MHRD STARS for funding. C. S. T. acknowledges Science and Engineering Research Board of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for support through the core research grant and Ramanujan Fellowship. C. S. T. acknowledges AOARD grant no. FA2386-19-1-4039.

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Author notes

  1. Lalita Sharma, Nirmal Kumar Katiyar, and Arko Parui contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Basic Sciences, Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRC), Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (H.P), Kamand, Mandi, 175005, India

    Lalita Sharma & Aditi Halder

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India

    Nirmal Kumar Katiyar & Krishanu Biswas

  3. School of Engineering, London South Bank University, London, SE10 AA, UK

    Nirmal Kumar Katiyar

  4. Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Arko Parui, Ritesh Kumar & Abhisek K. Singh

  5. Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 382355, India

    Rakesh Das & Chandra Sekhar Tiwary

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  1. Lalita Sharma
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Correspondence to Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, Abhisek K. Singh, Aditi Halder or Krishanu Biswas.

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Sharma, L., Katiyar, N.K., Parui, A. et al. Low-cost high entropy alloy (HEA) for high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Nano Res. 15, 4799–4806 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3802-4

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