Oxygen and Hydrogen Evolution Reaction on Oriented Single Crystals of Ruthenium Dioxide

摘要

A novel design for water electrolysis using a solid polymer electrolyte is being developed by General Electric. Ruthenium is one of the best electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction. There are problems connected with the significant loss in electrocatalytic activity with time. This performance degradation is presumably due to the gradual formation of an RuO sub 2 film. We have performed electrochemical measurements on (100), (110) and (111) oriented single crystals of RuO sub 2 in order to elucidate the mechanism of the electrocatalytic process. Large single crystals were grown by the vapor transport method. Our investigation has revealed several interesting differences for the various orientations. This study indicates that RuO sub 3 may be an important intermediate species prior to oxygen evolution and that the formation of the RuO sub 3 is the rate limiting process. Similar results were previously obtained for IrO sub 2 . (ERA citation 05:013200)