Iridium and Ruthenium Modified Polyaniline Polymer Leads to Nanostructured Electrocatalysts with High Performance Regarding Water Splitting

The breakthrough in water electrolysis technology for the sustainable production of H, considered as a future fuel, is currently hampered by the development of tough electrocatalytic materials. We report a new strategy of fabricating conducting polymer-derived nanostructured materials to accelerate the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and water splitting. Extended physical (XRD, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX)) and electrochemical (cyclic voltammetry (CV), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)) methods were merged to precisely characterize the as-synthesized iridium and ruthenium modified polyaniline (PANI) materials and interrogate their efficiency. The presence of Ir(+III) cations during polymerization leads to the formation of Ir metal nanoparticles, while Ru(+III) induces the formation of RuO oxide nanoparticles by thermal treatment; they are therefore methods for the on-demand production of oxide or metal nanostructured electrocatalysts. The findings from using 0.5 M HSO highlight an ultrafast electrochemical kinetic of the material PANI-Ir for HER (36 - 0 = 36 mV overpotential to reach 10 mA cm at 21 mV dec), and of PANI-Ru for OER (1.47 - 1.23 = 240 mV overpotential to reach 10 mA cm at 47 mV dec), resulting in an efficient water splitting exactly at its thermoneutral cell voltage of 1.45 V, and satisfactory durability (96 h).