Reactive oxygen species in iridium-based OER catalysts.

ABSTRACT: Tremendous effort has been devoted towards elucidating the fundamental reasons for the higher activity of hydrated amorphous Ir^III/IV oxyhydroxides (IrO _x ) in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in comparison with their crystalline counterpart, rutile-type IrO₂, by focusing on the metal oxidation state. Here we demonstrate that, through an analogy to photosystem II, the nature of this reactive species is not solely a property of the metal but is intimately tied to the electronic structure of oxygen. We use a combination of synchrotron-based X-ray photoemission and absorption spectroscopies, ab initio calculations, and microcalorimetry to show that holes in the O 2p states in amorphous IrO _x give rise to a weakly bound oxygen

SUBMITTER: Pfeifer V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5134683 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature