Zr-Doped Ir as an Effective Anode for Refractory SMX Degradation

Electrochemical oxidation has been considered as an efficient method to degrade pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Maintaining low power consumption while increasing the number of oxidation intermediates is deserving of exploring. Herein, Ti/SnO₂-Sb/Zr_0.3Ir_0.7O₂ was prepared by Zr doped into IrO₂ and used for Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) degradation. The addition of Zr significantly increased the electrochemically active area and facilitated the catalyst to degrade SMX dramatically at a lower overpotential. The extremely outstanding lifetime of catalysts can reach 800 h during the accelerated life test, which showed excellent stability and developmental prospects. The overpotential at 10 mA·cm^-2 is about 329 mV, indicating that this electrode has a high oxygen evolution reaction activity. Furthermore, the electrical efficiency per log order for the electrode is only 8.50 kW h m^-3 at 4 V. Our research provides new anode electrochemical catalysts for the degradation of organic pollutants.