Catalysis by design: development of a bifunctional water splitting catalyst through an operando measurement directed optimization cycle.
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Publication Date
2018-06Journal Title
Chemical science
ISSN
2041-6520
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Volume
9
Issue
24
Pages
5322-5333
Language
eng
Type
Article
Physical Medium
Electronic-eCollection
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Kornienko, N., Heidary, N., Cibin, G., & Reisner, E. (2018). Catalysis by design: development of a bifunctional water splitting catalyst through an operando measurement directed optimization cycle.. Chemical science, 9 (24), 5322-5333. https://doi.org/10.1039/c8sc01415a
Abstract
A critical challenge in energy research is the development of earth abundant and cost-effective materials that catalyze the electrochemical splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen at high rates and low overpotentials. Key to addressing this challenge lies not only in the synthesis of new materials, but also in the elucidation of their active sites, their structure under operating conditions and ultimately, extraction of the structure-function relationships used to spearhead the next generation of catalysts. In this work, we present a complete cycle of synthesis and operando characterization, and redesign of an amorphous cobalt phosphide (CoPx) bifunctional catalyst. The research was driven by integrated electrochemical analysis, Raman spectroscopy and gravimetric measurements utilizing a novel quartz crystal microbalance spectroelectrochemical cell to uncover the catalytically active species ofi amorphous CoPx and subsequently modify the material to enhance the activity of the elucidated catalytic phases. Illustrating the power of our approach, the second generation cobalt-iron phosphide (CoFePx) catalyst developed through an iteration of the operando measurement directed optimization cycle is superior in both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactivity over the previous material and is capable of overall water electrolysis at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 with 1.5 V applied bias in 1M KOH electrolyte
Sponsorship
ERC Consolidator Grant 'MatEnSAP', Royal Society Newton International Fellowship
Funder references
ECH2020 EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL (ERC) (682833)
Royal Society (NF160054)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/c8sc01415a
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279422
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/