Enhancing mass activity and stability of iridium based electrochemical catalyst using metal oxide nanowires support for oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

Hydrogen energy has been widely mentioned as a solution to global energy problems. There are various ways to produce hydrogen. Polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is the most promising candidate among them because of its high efficiency and large scale production. However, due to high energy barrier for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the characteristic of PEMWE that is driven under acidic conditions, developing a new catalyst with high efficiency and durability is required. In this study, we developed antimony doped tin oxide nanowires supported iridium based electrochemical catalyst (Ir-ATO/NW) via sequential angle deposition and high temperature annealing. The fabrication process is much simpler than others because iridium and ATO support are simultaneously transferred to target substrate through solvent-assisted nanotransfer printing (S-nTP). Strong metal-support interaction (SMSI) between iridium nanoparticles and ATO nanowires plays an important role in improving both the mass activity and durability. As a result, the electrochemical catalyst that we fabricated exhibits 6.35 times higher mass activity and 3 times higher stability under acidic conditions compared to commercial iridium black.