Nanoscale Limitations in Metal Oxide Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution

Metal oxides are attractive candidates for low cost, earth-abundant electrocatalysts. However, owing to their insulating nature, their widespread application has been limited. Nanostructuring allows the use of insulating materials by enabling tunneling as a possible charge transport mechanism. We demonstrate this using TiO2 as a model system identifying a critical thickness, based on theoretical analysis, of about ∼4 nm for tunneling at a current density of ∼1 mA/cm(2). This is corroborated by electrochemical measurements on conformal thin films synthesized using atomic layer deposition (ALD) identifying a similar critical thickness. We generalize the theoretical analysis deriving a relation between the critical thickness and the location of valence band maximum relative to the limiting potential of the electrochemical surface process. The critical thickness sets the optimum size of the nanoparticle oxide electrocatalyst and this provides an important nanostructuring requirement for metal oxide electrocatalyst design.