Photo-assistant electrocatalytic activity improvement towards oxygen evolution

As one of the most important reactions involved in water splitting, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) suffers from a slow kinetic. Herein, with a composite catalyst of Au/Co-FeOOH, it was shown that the photo-irradiation could greatly activate the catalytic performance for OER due to the plasmon effect of Au nanoparticles. With 532 nm of photo-irradiation, the overpotential at 10 mA cm-2 for OER decreased from 386 to 309 mV with the optimized composite. It is believed that the two factors, hot electron exci-tation promoting the formation of active species and the charge transfer modulating the electronic struc-ture of active sites, are responsible for the enhancement of catalytic activity. These findings highlighted the possibility of activation of OER catalysis by photo-irradiation and would open up a new route for the design of advanced electrocatalysts. (c) 2021 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights reserved.