Joel A. Haber

TL;DR: In this article, a new Ce-rich family of active oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts composed of earth abundant elements, discovered using high-throughput methods, was reported.

TL;DR: In this paper, a quinary transition-metaloxide-based OER electrocatalyst was investigated under operando ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (X-ray PES) and Xray absorption spectrographic (XAS) at the solid/liquid interface.

Abstract: The reaction chemistry of H-terminated crystalline Si(111) and Si(100) surfaces in CH3OH, CD3OD, CF3(CH2)3OH, C4H9OH, and C4D9OD solutions containing ferrocenium (Fc+)−BF4, I2, or Br2 was monitored using X-ray photoelectron (XP) spectroscopy and infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Addition of the one-electron oxidant Fc+, or addition of the oxidizing species I2 or Br2, produced diagnostic changes in the IR spectra that clearly indicated formation of surficial Si−OR groups. XPS data confirmed the conclusions of the IR studies. Under our reaction conditions, no detectable reaction occurred without the presence of the oxidant. The data are consistent with oxidative activation of the surficial Si−H bonds toward nucleophilic attack by the alcohols. The reaction chemistry was generally similar on (111)- and (100)-oriented Si surfaces, although some differences were observed in the ratio of reaction products on the two different surface orientations. Alkoxylated surfaces were also prepared by a two-step process in which...

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify two reasons why it is difficult to find TMOs with a high ORR activity: TMO surfaces consistently bind oxygen atoms more weakly than transition metals do, which makes the breaking of the O-O bond rate-determining difficult.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the Mn-Sb-O system for non-precious-metal oxygen evolution electrocatalysts and found that Mn can be incorporated into the rutile oxide structure at much higher concentrations than previously known.