Iridium-titanium oxides for efficient oxygen evolution reaction in acidic media

Active and highly stable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalyst for PEM-based water electrolysis are currently in high demand. Herein, we report a rutile iridium-titanium oxide solid solution (IrTiOx) through a facile one-step annealing of a Ti-based metal-organic framework precursor. The composite exhibits excellent OER activity and stability in acidic media, with a low overpotential of 296 mV at 10 mA cm−2 while the OER activity was retained during a 100-h galvanostatic stability test at a constant current of 10 mA cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4, outperforming the state-of-the-art IrO2-based electrocatalysts. We further demonstrate the structure evolution of iridium-titanium oxide during OER operations. In contrast to the initial uniform distribution of Ir and Ti over the entire architecture, after OER stability test, a hollow morphology is formed, in which the particle surface is covered with an IrOx-rich layer and entire particle becomes hollow. We ascribe the structure evolution to the Ir/Ti leaching and redeposition during the OER operations. We propose that the structure evolution of iridium-titanium oxide during the electrochemical process is responsible for the high OER activity and stability of IrTiOx.