High activity and durability of novel perovskite electrocatalysts for water oxidation

Development of highly active and cost-effective electrocatalysts is central to the large-scale electrolysis of water for renewable energy generation. Perovskite oxides are a group of promising candidates to lower the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) barriers in water splitting and further improvement of their activity and durability is an important objective. Here we report scandium and niobium cation (Sc³⁺ and Nb⁵⁺) doped strontium cobaltite perovskites (SrSc_xNb_yCo_1-x-yO_3-δ) as a family of highly active and durable electrocatalysts for the OER in alkaline solution. These perovskites not only manifest up to a factor of 50 increase of the intrinsic activity compared to the gold-standard OER electrocatalysts (such as IrO₂ and RuO₂) and a factor of 5.8 enhancement to the perovskite-Ba_0.5Sr_0.5Co_0.8Fe_0.2O_3-δ at an overpotential of 0.35 V, but also, more importantly, show excellent durability in alkaline solutions under operation.