Principal Investigator Yang Shao-Horn
We aim for establishing fundamental principles governing oxide activity for ORR at high temperature. Little is known about the oxide surface chemistry that influences the activity near ambient oxygen partial pressures, which hampers the design of highly active catalysts for many clean-energy technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells. Using in situ synchrotron-based, ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to study the surface chemistry changes, we show that the coverage of surface secondary phases on a (001)-oriented La0.8Sr0.2CoO(3–delta) (LSC) film becomes smaller than that on a LSC powder pellet at elevated temperatures. In addition, strontium (Sr) in the perovskite structure enriches towards the film surface in contrast to the pellet having no detectable changes with increasing temperature. We propose that the ability to reduce surface secondary phases and develop Sr-enriched perovskite surfaces of the LSC film contributes to its enhanced activity for O2 electrocatalysis relative to LSC-powder-based electrodes.