title: Thermodynamic explanation of the universal correlation between oxygen evolution activity and corrosion of oxide catalysts.
abstract: In recent years, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has attracted increased research interest due to its crucial role in electrochemical energy conversion devices for renewable energy applications. The vast majority of OER catalyst materials investigated are metal oxides of various compositions. The experimental results obtained on such materials strongly suggest the existence of a fundamental and universal correlation between the oxygen evolution activity and the corrosion of metal oxides. This corrosion manifests itself in structural changes and/or dissolution of the material. We prove from basic thermodynamic considerations that any metal oxide must become unstable under oxygen evolution conditions irrespective of the pH value. The reason is the thermodynamic instability of the oxygen anion in the metal oxide lattice. Our findings explain many of the experimentally observed corrosion phenomena on different metal oxide OER catalysts.
authors.affiliation: Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Binninger
authors.affiliation: HySA/Catalysis, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa.
authors.forename: Rhiyaad
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mohamed
authors.affiliation: Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Kay
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Waltar
authors.affiliation: Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Emiliana
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fabbri
authors.affiliation: HySA/Catalysis, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa.
authors.forename: Pieter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Levecque
authors.affiliation: Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Rüdiger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kötz
authors.affiliation: 1] Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland [2] ETH Zürich, Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Schmidt