Highly oxygen evolution
reaction (OER)-active electrocatalysts
often exhibit improved OER durability in the presence of carbon corrosion
or oxidation (COR) in the literature. The activity-durability coincidence
of OER electrocatalysts was theoretically understood by preferential
depolarization in galvanostatic situations. At constant-current conditions
for a system involving multiple reactions that are independent and
competitive, the overpotential is determined most dominantly by the
most facile reaction so that the most facile reaction is responsible
for a dominant portion of the overall current. Therefore, higher OER
activity improves durability by mitigating the current responsible
for COR. The activity-durability coincidence was then proved experimentally
by comparing between two catalysts of the same chemical identity (MnCo2O4) in different dimensions (5 and 100 nm in size).
Carbon corrosion responsible for inferior durability was suppressed
in the smaller-dimension catalyst (MnCo2O4 in
5 nm) having more numbers of active sites per a fixed mass.
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