Electrochemical water splitting is an efficient carbon emission-free process to obtain hydrogen fuel with high purity. In hydrogen production, however, the overall efficiency in water electrolysis is hindered by the sluggish kinetics of oxygen evolution involving of a complex four-electron transfer reaction. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a high performance electrocatalyst, which has lower the kinetic barrier of OER and greatly improve the energy efficiency. The state-of-the-art electrocatalysts for the OER mostly depend on noble metals such as iridium(Ir) and ruthenium(Ru). Because the limited resource and high cost of the noble metals in the catalysts enhance their catalytic activity and durability for OER. In this study, thus, we incorporate tantalum(Ta) oxide into iridium(Ir) oxide to form the composite phases of IrO2-Ta2O5 via electrospinning process followed by the thermal annealing. We carefully examine the formation of metal oxide composite phases of nanofibers in terms of various compositions and annealing temperature in order to optimize the electrochemical performances in OER. Furthermore, we explore pH-universal electrocatalytic performances of OER in the broad range of pH.

IrO2-Ta2O5 composite electrospun nanofibers for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction

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