Manipulating Electrocatalytic Activity of Perovskite Oxide Through Electrochemical Treatment

Perovskite oxides are widely used in electrochemical cells, profiting from their excellent accommodation of different elements and structure stability. Here, it is reported that when rapidly exceeding the electrochemical stability window of a perovskite oxide through electrochemical treatment, nanoparticles can dynamically exsolve from the perovskite lattice, yielding a nanoparticle decorated material (NDM) with fascinating particle population and distribution. It is reported that as compared to the NDM produced by chemical gas reduction, electrochemical treatment fabricated NDM shows much better electrochemical performance. At 900 °C, a peak power density (PPD) of 896 mW cm^-2 (more than tenfold enhancement) is obtained for a yttrium stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolyte-supported symmetrical cell with La_0.43 Ca_0.37 Ti_0.8 Co_0.1 Fe_0.1 O_{3- δ} (LCTCF) electrode after electrochemical treatment for several minutes, while it only reaches to 210 mW cm^-2 after chemical gas treatment for tens of hours using humidified hydrogen as fuel. The study establishes a new fairyland for tuning the performance of-but not limited to-the electrochemical cells.