Fluorine substituted (Mn,Ir)O2:F high performance solid solution oxygen evolution reaction electro-catalysts for PEM water electrolysisThis is an abstract presented at the AIChE Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA (November 14-18, 2016)

• Main Authors: Ghadge, Shrinath Dattatray, Patel, Prasad Prakash, Datta, Moni Kanchan, Velikokhatnyi, Oleg I, Kuruba, Ramalinga, Shanthi, Pavithra M, Kumta, Prashant N
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 20-03-2017
• ISSN: 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/c6ra27354h

Identification and development of high performance with reduced overpotential (
i.e.
reduced operating electricity cost) oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts for proton exchange membrane (PEM) based water electrolysis with ultra-low noble metal content (
i.e.
reduced materials cost) is of significant interest for economic hydrogen production, thus increasing the commercialization potential of PEM water electrolysis. Accordingly, a novel electrocatalyst should exhibit low overpotential, excellent electrochemical activity and durability superior to state of the art noble metal based electro-catalysts (
e.g.
Pt, IrO
2
, RuO
2
). Herein, for the very first time to the best of our knowledge, exploiting first-principles theoretical calculations of the total energies and electronic structures, we have identified a reduced noble metal content fluorine doped solid solution of MnO
2
and IrO
2
, denoted as (Mn
1−
x
Ir
x
)O
2
:F (
x
= 0.2, 0.3, 0.4), OER electrocatalyst system exhibiting lower overpotential and higher current density than the state of the art IrO
2
and other previously reported systems for PEM water electrolysis. The doped solid solution displays an excellent electrochemical performance with a lowest reported onset potential to date of ∼1.35 V (
vs.
RHE), ∼80 mV lower than that of IrO
2
(∼1.43 V
vs.
RHE) and ∼15 fold (
x
= 0.3 and 0.4) higher electrochemical activity compared to pure IrO
2
. In addition, the system displays excellent long term electrochemical durability, similar to that of IrO
2
in harsh acidic OER operating conditions. Our study therefore demonstrates remarkable, ∼60-80% reduction in noble metal content along with lower overpotential and excellent electrochemical performance clearly demonstrating the potential of the (Mn
1−
x
Ir
x
)O
2
:F system as an OER electro-catalyst for PEM water electrolysis.
The exploration of high performance electro-catalysts to facilitate oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in proton exchange membrane based water splitting is of vital importance for various energy storage devices and for sustainable hydrogen production.