(216d) Electrochemical Synthesis of Hydrogen Peroxide Via Water Electrolysis: Challenges and Opportunities

Electrochemical production of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) from water oxidation could provide a way to produce a chemically valuable product from an earth abundant material. Today there are only a few experimental studies that produce measurable amount of hydrogen peroxide through electrochemical oxidation of water.^1,2 A major challenge is that the electrocatalyst must suppress the thermodynamically favored four-electron pathway (O₂ evolution) and direct selectivity towards two-electron path (H₂O₂ evolution).³ We have recently developed a complete understanding of water oxidation incorporating the formation of hydroxyl radical, a one-electron water oxidation reaction.⁴ Based on thermodynamic analysis, we demonstrated leads to OH radical, H₂O₂ and O₂ evolution and rationalized product selectivity in several different experimental reports.

In this work, by combining the above knowledge and density functional theory (DFT) calculations we search for other materials to identify suitable electrocatalyst with high selectivity towards two-electron path (H₂O₂ evolution).

References

(1) Fuku, K.; Sayama, K.; Fujishima, A.; Honda, K.; Maeda, K. Chem. Commun. 2016, 52 (31), 5406–5409.

(2) Izgorodin, A.; Izgorodina, E.; MacFarlane, D. R. Energy Environ. Sci. 2012, 5 (11), 9496.

(3) Viswanathan, V.; Hansen, H. A.; Nørskov, J. K. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6 (21), 4224–4228.

(4) Siahrostami, S.; Li, G.-L.; Viswanathan, V.; Nørskov, J. K. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2017, 1157–1160.