Engineering electrocatalytic activity in nanosized perovskite cobaltite through surface spin-state transition

The activity of electrocatalysts exhibits a strongly dependence on their electronic structures. Specifically, for perovskite oxides, Shao-Horn and co-workers have reported a correlation between the oxygen evolution reaction activity and the eg orbital occupation of transition-metal ions, which provides guidelines for the design of highly active catalysts. Here we demonstrate a facile method to engineer the eg filling of perovskite cobaltite LaCoO3 for improving the oxygen evolution reaction activity. By reducing the particle size to ∼80 nm, the eg filling of cobalt ions is successfully increased from unity to near the optimal configuration of 1.2 expected by Shao-Horn's principle. Consequently, the activity is significantly enhanced, comparable to those of recently reported cobalt oxides with eg(∼1.2) configurations. This enhancement is ascribed to the emergence of spin-state transition from low-spin to high-spin states for cobalt ions at the surface of the nanoparticles, leading to more active sites with increased reactivity.