Performance of water oxidation by 3D printed electrodes modified by prussian blue analogues

Abstract

The water oxidation is the limiting step in the water-splitting process. Given this scenario, the development of new catalysts is essential in this field. The emergent demand is the use of Earth-abundant elements and catalysts with high performance under mild conditions. Because of this, catalysts such as Prussian Blue analogues (PBA) have been receiving a lot of attention in recent years. In addition, working under neutral conditions allows us to take advantage of the modification of conductive polymeric 3D printed electrodes (3DPE) with Prussian Blue. Thus, we described in this work the development of the polymeric 3D printed electrodes modified by cobalt-Prussian Blue and their performance in the water oxidation process. The 3D printed electrodes modified with Co3[Co(CN)6]2 (Co-Co PBA) have a Tafel slope of 343 mV dec−1 while those modified with Co3[Fe(CN)6]2 (Co-Fe PBA) have a Tafel slope of 378 mV dec−1. This means that both catalysts have the same mechanism for the water oxidation process. On the other hand, the overpotential of Co-Co PBA in 3DPE is lower than the value observed by Co-Fe PBA in 3DPE suggesting the best electrocatalytic activity for Co-Co PBA catalyst.