Coupling of Thermal and Electrochemical-Activated Stainless-Steel Mesh as a Highly Robust Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction
Anil A. Kashale, Fei-Chien Hsu, Ruei‐Hung Juang, I‐Wen Peter Chen
Abstract
Recent research trends in electrocatalytic water splitting have been aimed at developing highly efficient, robust, scalable, and low-cost electrocatalysts. In this work, the superior oxygen evolution reaction (OER)-active granule networks of iron oxide have been synthesized by simple thermal oxidation with electrochemical activation on stainless-steel mesh (SSM). During the electrochemical activation process of the thermally oxidized SSM, the chromium (Cr) elements were completely leached out of the thermally oxidized SSM to generate much more OER-active sites on the surface. The 450 °C thermally oxidized SSM with 40 h of i–t chronoamperometry activation, named SSM-450EA, shows an overpotential of 265 mV and a Tafel slope of 44 mV/dec with a current density of 10 mA/cm2. This work highlights the ideas on coupling both thermal and electrochemical engineering in augmenting the electroactivity of electrocatalysts as a robust substrate while providing insights into such a structure-tuning approach.