Sacrificial Cu Layer Mediated the Formation of an Active and Stable Supported Iridium Oxygen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalyst
Anja Lončar, Daniel Escalera‐López, Francisco Ruiz‐Zepeda, Armin Hrnjić, Martin Šala, Primož Jovanovič, Marjan Bele, Serhiy Cherevko, Nejc Hodnik
Abstract
/C). To study the effect of the sacrificial less-noble metal layer on the catalytic performance of the synthesized material, characterization methods, namely X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and identical location transmission electron microscopy were employed and complemented with scanning flow cell coupled to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, which allowed studying the online dissolution during the catalytic reaction. Utilization of these advanced methods revealed that the sacrificial Cu layer positively affects both Ir OER mass activity and its durability, which was assessed via S-number, a recently reported stability metric. Improved activity of Cu analogue was ascribed to the higher surface area of smaller Ir nanoparticles, which are better stabilized through a strong metal-support interaction (SMSI) effect.