As demands for alternative sources of energy increase over the coming decades, water electrolysis will play a larger role in meeting our needs. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) component of water electrolysis suffers from slow kinetics. An efficient, inexpensive, alternative electrocatalyst is needed. We present here high-activity, low onset potential, stable catalyst materials for OER based on a hierarchical network architecture consisting of Fe and Ni coated on carbon fiber paper (CFP). Several compositions of Fe-Ni electrodes were grown on CFP using a hydrothermal method, which produced an interconnected nanosheet network morphology. The materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Electrochemical performance of the catalyst was examined by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear sweep voltammetry (LSV). The best electrodes showed favorable activity (23 mA/cm², 60 mA/mg), onset potential (1.42 V vs. RHE), and cyclability. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/26199 |
| Date | 30 September 2014 |
| Creators | O'Donovan-Zavada, Robert Anthony |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
Page generated in 0.0126 seconds