Iridium-Nickel Composite Oxide Catalysts for Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Acidic Water Electrolysis

A series of Ir1-xNixO2-y (0 <= x <= 0.5) composite oxides have been prepared by a simple pyrolysis method in ethanol system and used as the electrocatalysts for OER in acidic medium. The materials have been characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrochemical performances of these Ir1-xNixO2-y composite catalysts are evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and steady-state measurements. The resulting oxides with the Ni content (x) less than 0.3 have a complex nature of metal Ir and rutile structure IrO2 which is similar to the Ir oxide prepared by the same approach and possess the contracted lattice resulted from the Ni-doping. Although the addition of Ni reduces the electroactive surface areas due to the coalescence of particles, the catalytic activity of the Ir1-xNixO2-y (0 < x <= 0.3) catalysts is slightly higher than that of the pyrolyzed Ir oxide. Regardless of the surface area difference, the intrinsic activity first increases and then decreases with the Ni content in Ir1-xNixO2-y catalysts, and the intrinsic activity of Ir0.7Ni0.3O2-y catalyst is about 1.4 times of the Ni-free Ir oxide mainly attributed to the enhancement of conductivity and a change of the binding energy as increasing amount of the incorporated Ni with respect to the pure IrO2. The Ir0.7Ni0.3O2-y catalyst shows a prospect of iridium-nickel oxide materials in reducing the demand of the expensive Ir oxide catalyst for OER in acidic water electrolysis.