Accelerated Surface Reconstruction through Regulating the Solid‐Liquid Interface by Oxyanions in Perovskite Electrocatalysts for Enhanced Oxygen Evolution

To promote the spontaneous chemical reaction process of LaNiO_3−δ, the oxyanions were added into electrolytes to regulate the solid–liquid interface. The oxyanions adsorb onto the solid–liquid interface, disrupting the dynamic equilibrium between the adsorbed OH⁻ ions and the OH⁻ ions generated during surface reconstruction. It could be an effective way to accelerate surface reconstruction process.

Abstract

A comprehensive understanding of surface reconstruction was critical to developing high performance lattice oxygen oxidation mechanism (LOM) based perovskite electrocatalysts. Traditionally, the primary determining factor of the surface reconstruction process was believed to be the oxygen vacancy formation energy. Hence, most previous studies focused on optimizing composition to reduce the oxygen vacancy formation energy, which in turn facilitated the surface reconstruction process. Here, for the first time, we found that adding oxyanions (SO₄ ²⁻, CO₃ ²⁻, NO₃ ⁻) into the electrolyte could effectively regulate the solid–liquid interface, significantly accelerating the surface reconstruction process and enhancing oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activities. Further studies indicated that the added oxyanions would adsorb onto the solid–liquid interface layer, disrupting the dynamic equilibrium between the adsorbed OH⁻ ions and the OH⁻ ions generated during surface reconstruction process. As such, the OH⁻ ions generated during surface reconstruction process could be more readily released into the electrolyte, thereby leading to an acceleration of the surface reconstruction. Thus, it was expected that our finding would provide a new layer of understanding to the surface reconstruction process in LOM-based perovskite electrocatalysts.

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