A SCALABLE, FAST APPROACH TO HIGH SURFACE AREA NICKEL ELECTRODES WITH IMPROVED PERFORMANCE FOR THE OXYGEN EVOLUTION REACTION AFTER ELECTROCHEMICAL AGING

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an essential half-reaction that is relevant to electrochemical energy conversion and hydrogen energy storage. The surface morphology of gas evolving electrodes can influence their efficiency and resulting performance. In this work, we demonstrate enhanced performance toward the OER after electrochemical aging for a series of high surface area nickel (Ni) electrocatalysts prepared by scalable, fast bead-blasting techniques. The efficiency of gas evolving reactions is influenced by the electrode surface morphology through the nucleation of gas bubbles occurring within recessed features on the electrode surfaces. The work described herein evaluated four distinctly textured Ni surfaces toward the performance of the OER, including two types of bead-blasted surfaces, as well as electrodeposited Ni and polished Ni surfaces. Each of these four types of electrodes were assessed using two types of electrochemical aging techniques: a steady-state and a limited aging technique. Steady-state electrochemical aging produced a uniform OER-active β-NiOOH phase. The results show that the bead-blasted electrodes exhibit improved performance compared to the other textured surfaces, demonstrating the potential of scalable surface processing techniques for enhancing electrocatalytic gas evolution processes.