High-Performance Oxygen Evolution Anode from Stainless Steel via Controlled Surface Oxidation and Cr Removal

Abstract

Improving the water oxidation performance of abundantly available materials, such as stainless steel (SS), with notable intrinsic electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity due to the presence of Ni and Fe is highly anticipated in water splitting. A new method for promoting the corrosion of stainless steel (304) was found which assisted the uniform formation of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) enhancing NiO incorporated Fe2O3 nanocrystals with the simultaneous reduction in the surface distribution of OER inactive Cr. An equimolar combination of KOH and hypochlorite was used as the corroding agent at 180 °C. The effect of corrosion time on the OER activity was studied and found that better water oxidation performance was observed when the corrosion time was 12 h (SS-12). The SS-12 showed an abnormal enhancement in OER activity compared to the untreated SS and other optimized versions of the same by requiring very low overpotentials of 260, 302, and 340 mV at the current densities of 10, 100, and 500 mA cm–2 along with a very low Tafel slope in the range of 35.6 to 43.5 mV dec–1. These numbers have certainly shown the high-performance electrocatalytic water oxidizing ability of SS-12. The comparative study revealed that the state-of-the-art IrO2 had failed to compete with our performance improved catalytic water oxidation anode “the SS-12”. This fruitful finding indicates that the SS-12 has the potential to be an alternate anode material to precious IrO2/RuO2 for alkaline water electrolyzers in future.

Phyto-inspired and scalable approach for the synthesis of PdO–2Mn2O3: a nano-material for application in water splitting electro-catalysis

“…By introducing any dopant, activity could be enhanced by providing more active sites and charge carriers. 59 On the basis of previous studies it has come to be known that palladium is an electroactive OER catalytic material compared to Pt or Ir 2 , as reported by Joya et al, Wang et al and Fang et al [89][90][91] Secondly, the present manipulation has been made on the basis of an assessment (ESI Fig. 4(a) and (b) †) in which Mn 2 O 3 has been tested individually for OER and HER activity.…”

Amorphous Catalysts and Electrochemical Water Splitting: An Untold Story of Harmony

“…However, it is the real challenge here. The energy lost in electrochemical water splitting can be lowered by designing high performance electrocatalysts that would deliver high catalytic current densities even with smaller catalyst loadings …”

Transforming Damage into Benefit: Corrosion Engineering Enabled Electrocatalysts for Water Splitting

“…Anantharaj et al. [ 113 ] employed the AOES of KOH/NaOCl to hydrothermally corrode SS‐304 to selectively leach the Cr ions. The produced Cl 2 in the hydrothermal process changed Cr 2 O 3 to water‐soluble CrCl 3 and simultaneously promoted the surface oxidation of SS to generate the NiO incorporated Fe 2 O 3 nanocrystals.…”