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Abstract:
Designing an efficient catalyst for acidic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of critical importance in manipulating proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer (PEMWE) for hydrogen production. Here, we report a fast, nonequilibrium strategy to synthesize quinary high-entropy ruthenium iridium-based oxide (M-RuIrFeCoNiO2) with abundant grain boundaries (GB), which exhibits a low overpotential of 189 millivolts at 10 milliamperes per square centimeter for OER in 0.5 M H2SO4. Microstructural analyses, density functional calculations, and isotope-labeled differential electrochemical mass spectroscopy measurements collectively reveal that the integration of foreign metal elements and GB is responsible for the enhancement of activity and stability of RuO2 toward OER. A PEMWE using M-RuIrFeCoNiO2 catalyst can steadily operate at a large current density of 1 ampere per square centimeter for over 500 hours. This work demonstrates a pathway to design high-performance OER electrocatalysts by integrating the advantages of various components and GB, which breaks the limits of thermodynamic solubility for different metal elements. High-entropy ruthenium-based oxide with abundant grain boundaries serves as a robust acidic oxygen evolution electrocatalyst.
