Discovery of LaAlO3 as an efficient catalyst for two-electron water electrolysis towards hydrogen peroxide

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 7256
• Main Authors: Baek, Jihyun, Jin, Qiu, Johnson, Nathan Scott, Jiang, Yue, Ning, Rui, Mehta, Apurva, Siahrostami, Samira, Zheng, Xiaolin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 25.11.2022; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 08 HYDROGEN; Anodizing; Catalysts; Density functional theory; Electrocatalysis; Electrochemical oxidation; Electrochemistry; Electrolysis; Hydrogen energy; Hydrogen peroxide; Hydrogen production; Metal oxides; Oxidation; Perovskites; Potassium carbonate; Screening
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34884-4

Abstract Electrochemical two-electron water oxidation reaction (2e-WOR) has drawn significant attention as a promising process to achieve the continuous on-site production of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). However, compared to the cathodic H 2 O 2 generation, the anodic 2e-WOR is more challenging to establish catalysts due to the severe oxidizing environment. In this study, we combine density functional theory (DFT) calculations with experiments to discover a stable and efficient perovskite catalyst for the anodic 2e-WOR. Our theoretical screening efforts identify LaAlO 3 perovskite as a stable, active, and selective candidate for catalyzing 2e-WOR. Our experimental results verify that LaAlO 3 achieves an overpotential of 510 mV at 10 mA cm −2 in 4 M K 2 CO 3 /KHCO 3 , lower than those of many reported metal oxide catalysts. In addition, LaAlO 3 maintains a stable H 2 O 2 Faradaic efficiency with only a 3% decrease after 3 h at 2.7 V vs. RHE. This computation-experiment synergistic approach introduces another effective direction to discover promising catalysts for the harsh anodic 2e-WOR towards H 2 O 2 .