Amorphous vanadium-doped iron borate/tetra boride hybrid as efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

Design of effective electrocatalyst as replacement of conventional expensive electrocatalyst for facilitating sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at anode has been identified as effective way to make the hydrogen production economic enough. Herein, we developed a unique combination of iron borate and iron tetra boride (Fe-BO/FeB) by facile chemical reduction process. The optimum vanadium doping further led to transform into amorphous nature of Fe-BO/FeB, which believed to be much beneficial for OER mechanism. The developed electrocatalyst needs 215 mV and 256 mV overpotential in alkaline 1M KOH electrolyte to achieve current density of 10 and 100 mA cm-2, respectively and also shows stability over 48h maintaining high current density of 200 mA cm-2. Enhanced performances were also verified by smallest activation energies for optimized sample as compared with pristine electrocatalyst.