Issue 52, 2017, Issue in Progress

Efficient water oxidation with amorphous transition metal boride catalysts synthesized by chemical reduction of metal nitrate salts at room temperature

Abstract

We present a variety of amorphous transition-metal borides prepared at room temperature by a chemical reduction method as highly active catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The amorphous borides exhibit activities much higher than the corresponding crystalline (spinel, layered double hydroxide and perovskite) metal oxides containing the identical metal compositions, which have already been regarded as promising OER catalysts. The amorphous Ni/Fe borides showed the best mass normalized OER current density of 50 A g−1 at an overpotential of 0.35 V, transcending the performance of the state-of-the-art OER catalyst, RuO2. Amorphous transition-metal borides demonstrated extremely high active OER catalytic activity. The outstanding catalytic activity can be attributed to the amorphous structure, the large specific surface areas (above 110 m2 g−1) and the electron-enriched transition metal sites stemming from boron doping. The stoichiometry of the catalysts can be controlled precisely even for the synthesis of quaternary metal boride catalysts, which made it feasible to further optimize the catalytic activity. These results indicated that it is facile to prepare highly active OER catalysts by the one-step chemical reduction process at room temperature.

Graphical abstract: Efficient water oxidation with amorphous transition metal boride catalysts synthesized by chemical reduction of metal nitrate salts at room temperature

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
02 Mar 2017
Accepted
20 Jun 2017
First published
28 Jun 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2017,7, 32923-32930

Efficient water oxidation with amorphous transition metal boride catalysts synthesized by chemical reduction of metal nitrate salts at room temperature

Y. Yang, L. Zhuang, T. E. Rufford, S. Wang and Z. Zhu, RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 32923 DOI: 10.1039/C7RA02558K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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