Hierarchical urchin-like CuxCo3−xO4 spinels as oxygen evolution reaction catalysts in alkaline anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers

Acedera, R.A. and Gupta, G. and Mamlouk, M. and Kawano, K. and Shunsuke, Y. and Balela, M.D. (2024) Hierarchical urchin-like CuxCo3−xO4 spinels as oxygen evolution reaction catalysts in alkaline anion exchange membrane water electrolyzers. Journal of the Iranian Chemical Society, 21 (1). pp. 151-165.

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Abstract

In this work, powdered hierarchical CuxCo3−xO4 catalysts were used as catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in an alkaline anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer (AAEMWE). The effect of increasing Cu concentration (x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1) on the OER catalysis performance of the spinel Co3O4 was studied. In general, Cu-doped Co3O4 samples performed better than the undoped spinel catalyst. The sample synthesized with Cu-doping at x = 0.75 (CCO-0.75) performed the best among the catalysts tested with an overpotential of 385 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH, which is 24% lower than that recorded for the undoped Co3O4 sample. An AAEMWE was assembled using CCO-0.75 on Ti gas diffusion layer (GDL), and Pt/C on carbon GDL as the anode, and cathode, respectively. The CCO-0.75||Pt/C cell required only 1.65 V to reach 100 mA cm−2 at 60 ℃ in 1 M KOH.