Effect of Calcination Temperature on the Activity of Unsupported IrO(2) Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Water Electrolyzers

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) water electrolyzers suffer mainly from slow kinetics regarding the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Noble metal oxides, like IrO(2) and RuO(2), are generally more active for OER than metal electrodes, exhibiting low anodic overpotentials and high catalytic activity. However, issues like electrocatalyst stability under continuous operation and cost minimization through a reduction in the catalyst loading are of great importance to the research community. In this study, unsupported IrO(2) of various particle sizes (different calcination temperatures) were evaluated for the OER and as anode electrodes for PEM water electrolyzers. The electrocatalysts were synthesized by the modified Adams method, and the effect of calcination temperature on the properties of IrO(2) electrocatalysts is investigated. Physicochemical characterization was conducted using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area measurement, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses. For the electrochemical performance of synthesized electrocatalysts in the OER, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) were conducted in a typical three-cell electrode configuration, using glassy carbon as the working electrode, which the synthesized electrocatalysts were cast on in a 0.5 M H(2)SO(4) solution. The materials, as anode PEM water electrolysis electrodes, were further evaluated in a typical electrolytic cell using a Nafion(®)115 membrane as the electrolyte and Pt/C as the cathode electrocatalyst. The IrO(2) electrocatalyst calcined at 400 °C shows high crystallinity with a 1.24 nm particle size, a high specific surface area (185 m(2) g(−1)), and a high activity of 177 mA cm(−2) at 1.8 V for PEM water electrolysis.