A CoVO precatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction: highlighting the importance of postmortem electrocatalyst characterization

Vanadium-doped cobalt oxide materials have emerged as a promising class of catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction. Previous studies suggest vanadium doping in crystalline Co spinel materials tunes the electronic structure and stabilizes surface intermediates. We report a CoV 2 O 4 material that...

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Published inChemical communications (Cambridge, England) Vol. 57; no. 7; pp. 883 - 886
Main Authors Michaud, Samuel E, Riehs, Michael T, Feng, Wei-Jie, Lin, Chia-Cheng, McCrory, Charles C. L
Format Journal Article
Published 28.01.2021
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Summary:Vanadium-doped cobalt oxide materials have emerged as a promising class of catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction. Previous studies suggest vanadium doping in crystalline Co spinel materials tunes the electronic structure and stabilizes surface intermediates. We report a CoV 2 O 4 material that shows good activity for the oxygen evolution reaction. However, postmortem characterization of the catalyst material shows dissolution of vanadium resulting in an amorphous CoO x material, suggesting that this vanadium-free material, and not CoV 2 O 4 , is the active catalyst. This study highlights the importance of postmortem characterization prior to mechanistic and computational analysis for this class of materials. Postmortem analysis of a CoV 2 O 4 catalyst for oxygen evolution reveals the active species is likely a vanadium-free amorphous cobalt oxide.
Bibliography:probe, and comparative table of the OER activities of other nanoparticulate catalysts based on as-synthesized activity metrics. See DOI
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production using an
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Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Experimental methods and details, additional characterization data for the as-synthesized and post-OER materials, cyclic voltammograms of V
in alkaline conditions, measured O
in situ
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10.1039/d0cc06513g
ISSN:1359-7345
1364-548X
DOI:10.1039/d0cc06513g