The Oxygen Evolution Reaction at Manganese Dioxide Films in Base: Kinetics & Mechanism

Alkaline water electrolysis has been proposed as an environmentally inoffensive route to the production of the large volumes of hydrogen gas required by a possible hydrogen economy [1-5]. In practice, the efficiency of water electrolysis is limited by the large anodic over-potential of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) [5]. Over the past thirty years, considerable research effort has been devoted to the design, synthesis and characterization of OER anode materials, with the aim of achieving useful rates of active oxygen evolution at the lowest possible over-potential, in order to optimize the overall electrolysis process. Currently, the optimal OER anode materials are RuO2 and IrO2, since these oxides exhibit the lowest overpotentials for the OER at practical current densities [6]. However, the high cost of these materials and thei