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Intermetallic IrGa-IrOx core-shell electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution

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Abstract

The development of high-performance Ir-based catalyst for electrocatalysis of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media plays a critical role in realizing the commercialization of polymer electrolyte membrane-based water electrolyzer technology. Here we report a low-Ir core-shell OER electrocatalyst consisting of an intermetallic IrGa (IrGa-IMC) core and a partially oxidized Ir (IrOx) shell. In acidic electrolytes, the IrGa-IMC@IrOx core-shell catalysts exhibit a low overpotential of 272 mV at 10 mA·cm−2 with Ir loading of ∼20 µg·cm−2 and a mass activity of 841 A·gIr−1 at 1.52 V, which is 3.6 times greater than that of commercial Ir/C (232 A·gIr−1) catalyst. We understand by the density functional theory (DFT) calculations that the enhanced OER activity of the IrGa-IMC@IrOx catalysts is ascribed to the lifted degeneracy of Ir 5d electron of surface IrOx sites induced by the intermetallic IrGa core, which increases the adsorption capacity of IrOx layer for O and OH binding and eventually lowers the energy barrier of the OER rate-determining steps.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the funding support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFA0702001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22071225 and 11774327), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. WK2060190103), and the Joint Funds from Hefei National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (No. KY2060000175), and the support by “the Recruitment Program of Thousand Youth Talents”.

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  1. Lin-Wei Chen and Fuxiang He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Lin-Wei Chen, Ru-Yang Shao, Qiang-Qiang Yan, Peng Yin, Wei-Jie Zeng, Ming Zuo & Hai-Wei Liang

  2. School of Pharmacy, Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, Hefei, 230012, China

    Lin-Wei Chen

  3. Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Fuxiang He & Lixin He

  4. Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Fuxiang He & Lixin He

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  1. Lin-Wei Chen
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Chen, LW., He, F., Shao, RY. et al. Intermetallic IrGa-IrOx core-shell electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution. Nano Res. 15, 1853–1860 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3778-0

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