Alternative Technique to RDE to Evaluate Photoelectrocatalysts for ORR

The scarcity of fuels due to the growing energy demand has encouraged research into topics such as energy conversion with materials that can take advantage of solar energy. Such situations have promote the emergence of various new materials to assist reactions of special interest such as oxygen reactions. (Oxygen Reduction Reaction, ORR and Oxygen Evolution Reaction, OER). Thus, numerous materials are emerging with the photoelectrocatalytic activity towards OER and ORR reactions. To evaluate the photo-assisted OER requires technical conditions that a rotating disk electrode (RDE) does not satisfy. In this work we present an alternative technique to RDE by adapting a flow in a microfluidic platform to satisfy the limit current while it can be irradiated and thus evaluate the photoelectocatalysis of a semiconductor that has the characteristic of a photoelectrocatalyst. To make the comparison, a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was used using the Pt/C system in a three-electrode cell designed with a microfluidic channel where we found that the mass flow is comparable to rpm.