Richard Walton’s group have this week published a paper in Angewandte Chemie describing some new mixed oxides of ruthenium and iridium that show favourable properties for electrochemical oxygen evolution from water. The work was part of an ongoing collaboration with industrial partner Johnson Matthey, and involved further collaboration with electrochemistry colleagues at the University of Southampton and the electron microscopy group in Warwick. An important aspect of the work was the use of in situ X-ray spectroscopy at Diamond Light Source: this has allowed new insights into the mode of operation of these important materials for energy applications, showing cooperative redox behaviour of two metals in mixed oxides.

“Water-Splitting Electrocatalysis in Acid Conditions Using Ruthenate-Iridate Pyrochlores” K. Sardar, E. Petrucco, C.I. Hiley, J.D.B Sharman, P.P. Wells, A.E. Russell, R.J. Kashtiban, J. Sloan and R.I. Walton, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 53 (2014) 10960–10964.October 6^th 2014.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201406668/abstract

(Open Access publication)