Dynamic carbon surface chemistry: Revealing the role of carbon in electrolytic water oxidation

• 作者: Alexander Klyushin Anna K.Mechler Feihong Song Ioannis Spanos Pascal Düngen Qingqing Gu Rik Mom Robert Schl(o)gl Sakeb H.Choudhury Saskia Heumann Xing Huang Yuxiao Ding
• 来源期刊: 能源化学
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（8）
• 页码范围: 155-159
• 页数: 5页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Carbon materials have been widely used as electrodes,but the mechanistic roles are still not clear due to the complexity of the carbon surface chemistry.Herein we clarify that intrinsic material properties of carbon have to be activated by extrinsic factors.Pure carbon has no catalytic activity when used as electrode for electrocatalytic water oxidation.The evolution of oxygen functional groups on the carbon surface with increasing potential and the subsequent formation of real active sites with iron impurities from the electrolyte have been confirmed.These in-situ formed active sites protect the carbon from deep oxidation.This unprecedented finding not only provides insight into the dynamic evolution of carbon electrode surface chemistry and raises awareness of the need for detailed surface analysis under operando conditions,but also suggests a direction for the development of scalable and high-performance carbonbased electrode systems for various electrochemical applications.