Publication date: 21st July 2025
Perovskite oxides offer a sustainable platform for catalyzing the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline water electrolysis through the use of earth-abundant and cost-effective alternatives to platinum group metals (PGM). While iridium and ruthenium-based anodes demonstrate the highest activity towards the OER, cobalt oxides offer an opportunity to achieve similar performance with fewer economic limitations. This can be further improved by employing exsolution to maximise the surface area of cobalt active sites with enhanced stability, contributing to additional environmental benefits in extended catalyst lifespan.
However, cobalt mining raises several social implications with human right violations including child and forced labor as well as health concerns due to its classification as a heavy metal and 2A carcinogen. Currently, one of the most reported perovskite-based catalyst due to its high performance is BSCF (Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-d) with 80at% Co-loading. Here we show that reducing doping in cobalt-doped perovskites, when coupled with exsolution, can improve nanoparticle morphology and population, enhancing OER activity. Preliminary findings had shown that our materials with just 10at% cobalt, Sr0.95Ti0.3Fe0.7-xCoxO3-d (x = 0.10, STFC10) matched the electrocatalytic activity of BSCF in alkaline media. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the exsolution of STFC5 (x = 0.05) with 5at% Co-loading can achieve a higher density of smaller nanoparticles than in STFC10 (x = 0.10).
These results indicate that cobalt loading can be significantly lowered and OER performance enhanced by using the STF perovskite family. We employed a range of physiochemical characterization techniques including XRD for confirmation of phase purity and information on the perovskite crystal structure; SEM for insight into surface morphology and nanoparticle arrangement; and XPS for the elemental composition and oxidation states of the exsolved components. Furthermore, electrochemical performance was evaluated using linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in 1M KOH.
This project has received funding from the European Union HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions under grant agreement ID 101122323.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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