Fabrication of γ-Fe2O3 Nanowires from Abundant and Low-cost Fe Plate for Highly Effective Electrocatalytic Water Splitting

Abstract

Water splitting is thermodynamically uphill reaction, hence it cannot occur easily, and also highly complicated and challenging reaction in chemistry. in electrocatalytic water splitting, the combination of oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions produces highly clean and sustainable hydrogen energy and which attracts research communities. Also, fabrication of highly active and low cost materials for water splitting is a major challenge. Therefore, in the present study, γ-fe 2 o 3 nanowires were fabricated from highly available and cost-effective iron plate without any chemical modifications/doping onto the surface of the working electrode with high current density. The fabricated nanowires achieved the current density of 10 mA/cm 2 at 1.88 V vs. RHE with the scan rate of 50 mV/sec. Stability measurements of the fabricated fe 2 o 3 nanowires were monitored up to 3275 sec with the current density of 9.6 mA/cm 2 at a constant potential of 1.7 V vs. RHE and scan rate of 50 mV/sec.

Facile Surface Treatment of Industrial Stainless Steel Waste Meshes at Mild Conditions to Produce Efficient Oxygen Evolution Catalysts

“…45−47 Note that the peaks that appear at 2θ = 43.7°, 50.9°, and 74.7°are the typical diffraction peaks of the austenite γ-phase iron (111), (200), and (220), respectively. 48 The unchanged elemental composition and diffraction pattern among the different samples could be attributed to the small thickness of the porous film formed on the SS surface (approximately 260 nm (Figure S6)), which is difficult to be detectable by EDX and XRD because they are generally bulk characterization techniques. 49,50 The electrochemical OER activity of the catalysts was measured with a 3-electrode cell in 1 M KOH using different electrochemical techniques.…”

Insights into Improving Photoelectrochemical Water‐Splitting Performance Using Hematite Anode

“…To observe any changes in the photoanode after the stability test, SEM images were obtained (Figure S10, Supporting Information), revealing the general retention of nanorod features. However, an unexpected the XRD (220) peak belonging to γ‐Fe 3 O 4 appeared among the existing peaks of α‐Fe 2 O 3 (Figure S11, Supporting Information), [ 61,62 ] which requires further investigation. Based on the observations, we believe the slight decrease in the photocurrent could be due to the structural/phase change after long‐term photoelectrolysis.…”

Nanoscale ZnO/α‐Fe2O3 Heterostructures: Toward Efficient and Low‐Cost Photoanodes for Water Splitting

“…One of the methods allowing H 2 production is the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, according to Equation (). [ 4–8 ] …”

“…[ 9,10 ] Two half reactions, hydrogen evolution reaction (HER, Equation ()) at the cathode and oxygen evolution reaction (OER, Equation ()) at the anode, are involved in the process, which occurs in an electrolysis cell made up of anode, cathode, and an aqueous electrolyte ( Figure ). [ 4–13 ] …”

“…To carry out the WS process, a potential higher than the theoretical thermodynamic potential (1.23 V at 25 °C and 1 atm) is required. [ 6,12 ] This excess potential, called overpotential, is usually quite large because commercial electrolyzers typically operate at a cell voltage of 1.8–2.0 V, thus limiting its practical use. [ 13,14 ] Therefore, decreasing the overpotential is key to make this process highly efficient.…”