Rational Manipulation of IrO₂ Lattice Strain on α-MnO₂ Nanorods as a Highly Efficient Water-Splitting Catalyst

Developing more efficient and stable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts is critical for future energy conversion and storage technologies. We demonstrate that inducing a lattice strain in IrO₂ crystal structure due to interface lattice mismatch enables an enhancement of the OER catalytic activity. The lattice strain is obtained by the direct growth of IrO₂ nanoparticles on a specially exposed surface of α-MnO₂ nanorods via a simple two-step hydrothermal synthesis. Interestingly, the prepared hydride OER activity increases with a lower IrO₂ grown mass, which offers an opportunity to reduce the usage of precious iridium and ultimately obtains a specific mass activity of 3.7 times than that of IrO₂ prepared under the same conditions and exhibits equivalent stability. The lattice mismatch in the underlying interface induces the formation of lattice strain in IrO₂ rather than the charge transfer between the materials. The lattice strain changes are in good agreement with the order of the OER activity. Our experimental results indicate that using the special exposed surface substrates or tuning the supporting morphology structure can manipulate the catalyst materials lattice strain for the design of more efficient OER catalysts.