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Research

Lanthanum-Nickel-based Perovskite-coated Nickel-electrodes for the Electrocatalysis of the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Hydrogen is regarded as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels when produced from renewable sources. Here, a key technology for its production is electrocatalytic water splitting. This technology could also help in solving the shift between the demand and the meteorologically limited production of renewable energy. The electrolysis of water yields hydrogen at the cathode and oxygen at the anode at a standard potential of 1.23 V. However, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains a bottleneck to this technology due to its sluggish kinetics, requiring high overpotentials.

To allow for large scale application of this technology, great efforts have been made to develop catalysts based on earth-abundant transition metals. Among such, nickel and nickel-based materials like lanthanum-nickel-perovskites have been identified to exhibits low overpotentials in the alkaline water electrolysis. Catalyst particles and -composition are varied by different synthesis methods and then tested in the OER.

Research focus:

• Oxygen Evolution Reaction
• Electrocatalysis
• Inorganic materialsynthesis and -characterisation