A Specific Example of Electrocatalysis Oxygen Evolution on Perovskites

3 A Specific Example of Electrocatalysis Oxygen Evolution on Perovskites 

What has been written so far in this chapter has come primarily from the thoughts of the author, and has arisen from the ideas of many physical electrochemists and their students and collaborators, not forgetting my own. But now I want to tell you about some electrocatalysts called perovskites and their electrocatalytic action on oxygen evolution from alkaline solution. One of the reasons I want 

FIGURE 1.12 When the interatomic distance in the electrocatalyst is too large, the heat of activation (defined by the intersection between the potential energy curves) is too high to be reached. On the contrary, the atomic adsorbates will be repelled from the surface as a consequence of the contact to the metal. 

Perovskites are compounds described by the general formula RTO3, where R is a rare earth element, say, lanthanum and T is a transition metal, say, nickel. They conduct electrons poorly and have to be helped by a little doping. 

On the other hand, the perovskites have not yet caught up in complexity with the far more complex bioreactions that often involve many consecutive steps compared with the three to four we shall consider here. 

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