Tailoring the Electrocatalytic Activity of Electrodeposited Co/Fe-Based Catalyst Inducing Spin Polarization Exploiting Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of utmost importance for the electrochemical water splitting process that is imperative for hydrogen generation without a carbon footprint. Though high overpotential and lower faradaic efficiency are integrated problems with the OER, recent studies manifest that introducing a spin-polarization improvement of the OER is feasible over the thermodynamic limit of the catalyst. Conceiving this idea, here, we demonstrate the superior electrochemical performance of electrochemically deposited amorphous chiral iron-doped cobalt oxide that exhibits higher current density and lower Tafel slope compared with its achiral analogue. Furthermore, we address a solution for another associated problem of the OER, i.e., hydrogen peroxide production as a byproduct, by illustrating the reduction of the hydrogen peroxide yield using the chiral catalyst. A detailed study proposes that the observed outcomes are attributed to the formation of a spin-polarized intermediate, which originates from the chirality-induced spin selectivity effect.