Robust and Stable Acidic Overall Water Splitting on Ir Single Atoms
Fang Luo, Hao Hu, Xiao Zhao, Zehui Yang, Quan Zhang, Jingxiang Xu, Takuma Kaneko, Yusuke Yoshida, Chengzhou Zhu, Weiwei Cai
Abstract
Single-atom electrocatalysts (SAEs) can realize the target of low-cost by maximum atomic efficiency. However, they usually suffer performance decay due to high energy states, especially in a harsh acidic water splitting environment. Here, we conceive and realize a double protecting strategy that ensures robust acidic water splitting on Ir SAEs by dispersing Ir atoms in/onto Fe nanoparticles and embedding IrFe nanoparticles into nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (Ir-SA@Fe@NCNT). When Ir-SA@Fe@NCNT acts as a bifunctional electrocatalyst at ultralow Ir loading of 1.14 μg cm–2, the required overpotentials to deliver 10 mA cm–2 are 250 and 26 mV for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 0.5 M H2SO4 electrolyte corresponding to 1370- and 61-fold better mass activities than benchmark IrO2 and Pt/C at an overpotential of 270 mV, respectively, resulting in only 1.51 V to drive overall water splitting. Moreover, remarkable stability is also observed compared to Pt/C-IrO2.