Experimental Verification of Ir 5d Orbital States and Atomic Structures in Highly Active Amorphous Iridium Oxide Catalysts

In iridium oxide catalysts, the electronic states whose energies are in the range of energetics and charge transfer kinetics of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) originate from the Ir 5d orbital states. However, the understanding of the atomic structures and orbital states underlying catalytic reactivity in amorphous iridium oxide oxygen evolving catalysts (Ir-OECs) is incomplete compared to that of crystalline oxides, owing to a lack of direct experimental verification. Here, we present experimental approaches using resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to directly access Ir 5d orbital excitations at the Ir L3 edge and atomic pair distribution function (PDF) measurements to characterize electronic and coordination structures at the atomic scale. The so-called iridium blue layer (IrBL) and IrOx were formed from the organometallic precursor complex [Cp*Ir(H2O)3]SO4 and the inorganic precursor IrCl3, respectively. Ex situ IrBL and IrOx films for RIXS and PDF measurements were prepared by conditioning electrodeposited films at a low voltage. The incident energy RIXS profile of IrOx exhibited extra weak resonantly enhanced excitation below 2 eV energy loss. The feature was clearly different from a single high-energy excitation above 3 eV of IrBL related to the interband transition between π- and σ-antibonding states. The atomic structure refinement based on PDF measurements revealed the atomic structure domains to have edge- and corner-shared IrO6 octahedra with trigonal-type distortion. Density functional theory calculations guided by the refined atomic structures shed light on the electronic structure corresponding to experimental results, including insulating and metallic phases in ex situ IrBL and IrOx films, respectively. Our study establishes different Ir 5d orbital states and atomic structures in two amorphous Ir oxide OER catalysts in their reduction states.