Study of the Effect of Calcination Temperature on the Morphology and Activity of Iridium Oxide Electrocatalyst Supported on Antimony Tin Oxide (ATO) for PEM Electrolyser Technology

Iridium oxide nanoparticles supported on Antimony Tin oxide (ATO) have been used for oxygen evolution reaction in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysis. The morphology, crystallinity, catalyst-support interaction and electrocatalyst oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of the catalyst Iridium oxide supported on ATO at various calcination temperatures have been studied. The supported catalyst was synthesized using the modified Polyol method. The synthesized electrocatalyst was physically characterized by Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Thermogravimetric Analysis, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Brunauer, Emmett and Teller BET surface area measurements. The catalyst was electrochemically characterized by cyclic voltammetry and polarization measurements in a typical three electrode system. The main focus of this work is to study the effect of calcination temperatures of 200, 350, 500 and 700 ⁰C. Iridium oxide phases formed as a function of temperature, degree of crystallization as well as the interaction of Iridium oxide nanoparticles with the ATO nanoparticles support will be presented.