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Updated: Jul 1, 2025
Chemical Precipitation Method for the Synthesis of Nb2O5 Modified Bulk Nickel Catalysts with High Specific Surface Area
Published on: February 19, 2018
An Immobilized (Carbene)Nickel Catalyst for Water Oxidation
Zhiyao Lu1, Debanjan Mitra1, Sri R Narayan1
1Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Hydrocarbon Institute, Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability, and Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 90089-1661, United States.
Abstract:
The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting is essential to electrochemical energy storage applications. While nickel electrodes are widely available heterogeneous OER catalysts, homogeneous nickel catalysts for OER are underexplored. Here we report two carbene-ligated nickel(II) complexes that are exceptionally robust and efficient homogeneous water oxidation catalysts. Remarkably, these novel nickel complexes can assemble a stable thin film onto a metal electrode through poly-imidazole bridges, making them supported heterogeneous electrochemical catalysts that are resilient to leaching and stripping. Unlike molecular catalysts and nanoparticle catalysts, such electrode-supported metal-complex catalysts for OER are rare and have the potential to inspire new designs. The electrochemical OER with our nickel-carbene catalysts exhibits excellent current densities with high efficiency, low Tafel slope, and useful longevity for a base metal catalyst. Our data show that imidazole carbene ligands stay bonded to the nickel(II) centers throughout the catalysis, which allows the facile oxygen evolution.
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