2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Precise tuning of electronic state of IrO2 by tailor-made conjugated polymer substrate for water electrolysis
| Project/Area Number |
19K15674
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| Research Institution | Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
Badam Rajashekar 北陸先端科学技術大学院大学, 先端科学技術研究科, 講師 (10794670)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | OER / Water splitting / Iridium oxide / Polythiophene / Acidic medium |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We have prepared a novel thiophene monomer and electropolymerized on TiO2 nanotubes (TNT) to get TNT/poly-BIAN-thiophene with α-diamine ligands for the complexation of Iridium. It was further decorated with IrO2 nanoparticles (nps) under two conditions, 1) TNT/poly-BIAN-thiophene with Ir complex and 2) without Ir complex to understand the effect of electronic interaction between α-diamine ligands of polymer substrate. Alongside, IrO2 nps were decorated on simple polythiphene-TNT and TNT substrates also. In total 4 different samples were prepared and systematically characterized. All the materials were subjected to electrochemical characterizations to understand the efficiency towards oxygen evolution reaction for water splitting. XPS results confirmed the presence of electronic interaction between the substrate polymer with α-diamine ligands and the IrO2 particles in TNT/poly-BIAN-thiophene-IrO2 with complex sample with which the over potential for OER can be reduced along with over all activity. Electrochemical results also showed that TNT/poly-BIAN-thiophene-IrO2 with complex showed highest activity with nearly 2.5 times higher activity than TNT-polythiophen-IrO2 and 30 times higher activity compared to TNT-IrO2. The overpotential for the OER reaction was also found to be 290 mV at 10 mA/cm2 which is very promising. Further the durability of TNT-BIAN-Thiophene-IrO2 was found to be very high even after usage of anode for several hours continuously.
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