Iron-Nickel Oxyhydroxide Catalyst from Watts Bath for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Water Electrolysis

A hydrogen economy is necessary to meet the social demands for less consumption of fossil fuels and it has several barriers that need to be addressed if this technology is to become cost effective. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is one of these barriers and catalysts based on nickel oxyhydroxide (NiOx) are believed to be promising for alkaline OER. We report results of iron doping for NiOx, we synthesized by electrodeposition, combinations of iron in Ni Watts solution to develop Fe- NiOx catalysts. The best sample has an overpotential of 254 mV at 10 mA cm-2 , this result is competitive to the best results found for alkaline OER. Our methodology consists of: linear and cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic stability and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy as electrochemical techniques. In addition, physical catalyst characterization techniques include: scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and surface elemental analysis by wet chemistry.