BIO

I am a third year Biochemistry student @ FSU who currently conducts research in the Lazenby laboratory focused on the enhancement of the Oxygen Evolution Reaction using low-cost, high earth abundant bimetallic nanocarbide materials. I am from Winter Park Fl, and plan to attend graduate school after my undergraduate graduation.

Benchmarking Iron Nickel Carbide Nanomaterials as Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

Water splitting includes the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), which are the processes of generating molecular oxygen and hydrogen from water, respectively. The development of commercial water electrolyzers, which perform electrochemical water splitting, is a potential route to achieve green energy storage, as an alternative to using energy derived from fossil fuels. However, the sluggish reaction kinetics of the OER and HER processes greatly limits the efficiency of energy conversion, necessitating the use of electrocatalysts for these reactions. State-of-the-art electrocatalysts for OER include the oxides of iridium and ruthenium, which are noted for their high catalytic activity. However, these catalysts have low stabilities and have a high cost as a result of their low earth abundance. Transition metal catalysts are promising materials of interest for electrocatalysis due to their high earth abundance, low cost, high activity and high stability. In this work, Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) were utilized as precursors for the size-controlled synthesis of FeNi nanocarbides, which were subsequently evaluated for their electrocatalytic activity and stability for the OER. The incorporation of Fe has previously been shown to be the reason for substantial enhancements in electrocatalytic activity towards the OER. Our study evaluates the electrocatalytic performance of FeNi nanocarbide catalysts, with varying Fe content, for the alkaline OER. These materials are compared against one of the state-of-the-art electrocatalysts, ruthenium oxide, using electrochemical characterization methods to assess activity and stability.

Keywords: electrochemistry, OER, nanocarbides