Publication date: 6th November 2020
The development of sustainable, fossil-free strategies to synthesize fuels and added-value chemicals has raised enormous interest in the last years, in order to provide reliable energy vectors as well as the feedstocks needed for the chemical industry at a global scale. In this context, water oxidation stands out as one of the preferred reaction to provide the protons and electrons needed for electrochemical conversion processes, although this reaction is considered a kinetic bottleneck and consequently, the development of electrocatalytic materials that effectively oxidize water is essential for improving the efficiency of the overall electrochemical conversion process. Currently, the most efficient water oxidation catalysts (WOC) are based on iridium and ruthenium oxides, IrO2 and RuO2. However, due to the scarcity and high-costs of these precious metal-based oxides, other alternatives need to be explored. Ni-based materials constitute one of the best alternatives due to their high electrocatalytic activity and stability under alkaline conditions, as a consequence of their high electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance. Indeed, large scale commercial Liquid Alkaline (LA) electrolyzers, preferentially use nickel-based anodes. Herein, an “Earth-abundant” undoped Nickel oxide (NiOx) electrocatalyst for water oxidation was investigated. An up-scalable and low-cost solution-based sol-gel synthetic route was employed to obtain non-stoichiometric NiOx electrocatalyst baked at mild temperatures from 100 to 500 ºC. The catalytic activity towards water oxidation was found to be inversely proportional to the baking temperature. The defective and amorphous nature of the NiOx electrocatalysts baked at the lowest temperatures (< 200 ºC) was assessed by a wide range of different structural, optical and spectroscopic techniques, leading to a higher acceptor density, attributed to a higher density of structural/electronic defects. Our champion NiOx catalyst grants 358 mV of overpotential at 10 mA cm-2 and more than 60h of continuous operation without significant losses.
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