title: Promoting Active Species Generation by Electrochemical Activation in Alkaline Media for Efficient Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution in Neutral Media.
abstract: In this study, by using dicobalt phosphide nanoparticles as precatalysts, we demonstrated that electrochemical activation of metallic precatalysts in alkaline media (comparing with directly electrochemical activation in neutral media) could significantly promote the OER catalysis in neutral media, specifically realizing a 2-fold enhanced activity and meanwhile showing a greatly decreased overpotential of about 100 mV at 10 mA cm-2. Compared directly with electrochemical activation in neutral media, the electrochemical activation in harsh alkaline media could easily break the strong Co-Co bond and promote active species generation on the surface of metallic Co2P, thus accounting for the enhancement of neutral OER activity, which is also evidenced by HRTEM and the electrochemical double-layer capacitance measurement. The activation of electrochemical oxidation of metallic precatalysts in alkaline media enhanced neutral OER catalysis could also be observed on CoP nanoparticles and Ni2P nanoparticles, suggesting this is a generic strategy. Our work highlights that the activation of electrochemical oxidation of metallic precatalysts in alkaline media would pave new avenues for the design of advanced neutral OER electrocatalysts.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Linqi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Haifeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lv
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xiaojun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Changzheng
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4416-6358
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials and ‡CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion and Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1416-5557
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xie
keywords: Metallic precatalysts; electrochemical activation; enhanced neutral OER activity; generic strategy