Benchmarking Electrocatalyst Stability for Acidic Oxygen Evolution Reaction: The Crucial Role of Dissolved Ion Concentration
Dissolved ion concentration in confined electrolyte volumes creates a Nernst shift that artificially inflates measured RuO₂ stability — a systematic bias that distorts comparisons across cell types and underlies many claims of excellent non-noble catalyst stability. Correcting for this reveals RuO₂ to be 2 orders of magnitude less stable than IrO₂, though 10× more active, with noble catalysts outperforming non-noble alternatives on both metrics.