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Abstract:
Water splitting for hydrogen production in acidic media has been limited by the poor stability of the anodic electrocatalyst
devoted to the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). To help circumvent this problem we have synthesized a class of novel Ir
oxohydroxides by rapid microwave-asisted hydrothermal synthesis, which bridges the gap between electrodeposited amorphous
IrOx films and crystalline IrO2 electrocatalysts prepared by calcination routes. For electrode loadings two orders of
magnitude below current standards, the synthesized compounds present an unrivalled combination of high activity and
stability under commercially relevant OER conditions in comparison to reported benchmarks, without need for pretreatment.
The best compound achieved a lifetime 33 times longer than the best commercial Ir benchmark. Thus, the reported efficient
synthesis of an Ir oxohydroxide phase with superior intrinsic OER performance constitutes a major step towards the
targeted design of cost-efficient Ir based OER electrocatalysts for acidic media.
