Direct evidence of boosted oxygen evolution over perovskite by enhanced lattice oxygen participation

The development of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts remains a major challenge that requires significant advances in both mechanistic understanding and material design. Recent studies show that oxygen from the perovskite oxide lattice could participate in the OER via a lattice oxygen-mediated mechanism, providing possibilities for the development of alternative electrocatalysts that could overcome the scaling relations-induced limitations found in conventional catalysts utilizing the adsorbate evolution mechanism. Here we distinguish the extent to which the participation of lattice oxygen can contribute to the OER through the rational design of a model system of silicon-incorporated strontium cobaltite perovskite electrocatalysts with similar surface transition metal properties yet different oxygen diffusion rates. The as-derived silicon-incorporated perovskite exhibits a 12.8-fold increase in oxygen diffusivity, which matches well with the 10-fold improvement of intrinsic OER activity, suggesting that the observed activity increase is dominantly a result of the enhanced lattice oxygen participation. While water splitting provides a renewable means to store energy, the sluggish O-2 evolution half-reaction limits applications. Here, authors examine a silicon-incorporated strontium cobaltite perovskite and correlate lattice oxygen participation in O-2 evolution to the oxygen ion diffusivity.