Size and Electronic Modulation of Iridium Nanoparticles on Nitrogen-Functionalized Carbon toward Advanced Electrocatalysts for Alkaline Water Splitting

Developing efficient catalytic materials for electrochemical water splitting is important. Herein, uniformly dispersed and size-controllable iridium (Ir) nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared using a nitrogen-functionalized carbon as the support (Ir/CN). We found that nitrogen functionalization can simultaneously modulate the size of Ir NPs to substantially enhance the catalytically active sites and adjust the electronic structure of Ir, thereby promoting electrocatalytic activity for water splitting. Consequently, the as-synthesized Ir/CN shows excellent electrocatalytic performance with overpotentials of 12 and 265 mV for hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions in basic medium, respectively. These findings may pave the way for designing and synthesizing other similar materials as efficient catalysts for electrochemical water splitting.