Direct oxygen isotope effect identifies the rate-determining step of electrocatalytic OER at an oxidic surface

Haschke S, Mader M, Schlicht S, Roberts AM, Angeles-Boza A, Barth J, Bachmann J (2018)


Publication Status: Published

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2018

Journal

Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Book Volume: 9

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07031-1

Abstract

Understanding the mechanism of water oxidation to dioxygen represents the bottleneck towards the design of efficient energy storage schemes based on water splitting. The investigation of kinetic isotope effects has long been established for mechanistic studies of various such reactions. However, so far natural isotope abundance determination of O-2 produced at solid electrode surfaces has not been applied. Here, we demonstrate that such measurements are possible. Moreover, they are experimentally simple and sufficiently accurate to observe significant effects. Our measured kinetic isotope effects depend strongly on the electrode material and on the applied electrode potential. They suggest that in the case of iron oxide as the electrode material, the oxygen evolution reaction occurs via a rate-determining O-O bond formation via nucleophilic water attack on a ferryl unit.

Authors with CRIS profile

How to cite

APA:

Haschke, S., Mader, M., Schlicht, S., Roberts, A.M., Angeles-Boza, A., Barth, J., & Bachmann, J. (2018). Direct oxygen isotope effect identifies the rate-determining step of electrocatalytic OER at an oxidic surface. Nature Communications, 9. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07031-1

MLA:

Haschke, Sandra, et al. "Direct oxygen isotope effect identifies the rate-determining step of electrocatalytic OER at an oxidic surface." Nature Communications 9 (2018).

BibTeX: Download