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One-dimensional iridium-based nanowires for efficient water electrooxidation and beyond

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Abstract

The sluggish reaction kinetics of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has largely lowered the efficiency of electrochemical water splitting. Ir represents one of the state-of-the-art electrocatalysts for promoting OER especially in acidic electrolytes. However, it remains a formidable challenge to synthesize high-quality one-dimensional (1D) Ir-based nanostructures for improved electrocatalytic performance. Herein, a template-assisted synthesis method is reported wherein 1D porous Ir-Te nanowires (Ir-Te NWs) are synthesized with Te NWs serving as the template. The Ir-Te NWs exhibit highly enhanced OER performance compared to commercial IrO2 and Ir/C. In detail, the overpotentials to reach 10 mA·cm−2 are 248 and 284 mV in 1 M KOH and 0.5 M H2SO4, respectively, much lower than those of commercial catalysts. The Ir-Te NWs also show smaller Tafel slopes than commercial IrO2 and Ir/C, signifying faster reaction kinetics. Besides, much more durable OER activity can be maintained for Ir-Te NWs with negligible decay during 25 and 20 h stability tests in 1 M KOH and 0.5 M H2SO4, respectively. Further analysis indicates that the significantly improved OER performance of Ir-Te NWs could be ascribed to the larger electrochemical surface area and smaller electrical resistance. More significantly, the templated synthesis of Ir-Te NWs can be facilely extended to the fabrication of other metal-Te NWs including Ru-Te, Rh-Te and Pt-Te NWs. The design and synthesis of 1D metal-based NWs in this work provide important inspiration for the synthesis of diversified 1D metallic nanostructures with distinctly enhanced catalytic performance and beyond.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2017YFA0208200 and 2016YFA0204100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22025108), and the start-up supports from Xiamen University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Leigang Li & Xiaoqing Huang

  2. College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Pengtang Wang, Zifang Cheng & Qi Shao

Authors
  1. Leigang Li
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  2. Pengtang Wang
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  3. Zifang Cheng
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  4. Qi Shao
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  5. Xiaoqing Huang
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Correspondence to Xiaoqing Huang.

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Li, L., Wang, P., Cheng, Z. et al. One-dimensional iridium-based nanowires for efficient water electrooxidation and beyond. Nano Res. 15, 1087–1093 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3603-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3603-9

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