Influence of duty cycle on the structure and electrocatalytic properties of pulse electrodeposited lead dioxide electrodes

In this work, PbO2 electrodes were prepared by pulse electrodeposition in the lead nitrate plating bath. Effects of duty cycle on the morphology and phase structure were investigated by scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The SEM and XRD results show that the decrease of duty cycles decreases the grain size of PbO2 electrodes. The steady-state polarization curves and accelerated life tests demonstrate that the oxygen evolution overpotential and service life of PbO2 electrodes increase with the decrease of duty cycle, the PbO2 electrodes prepared at 20 % duty cycle possess highest oxygen evolution overpotential and service life, and the service life of PbO2 electrodes prepared at 20 % duty cycle reaches 71 h which is almost two times longer than that of the PbO2 electrodes prepared by direct electrodeposition. The bulk electrolysis shows that the methyl orange (MO) degradation on the PbO2 electrodes prepared by pulse electrodeposition is the pseudo-first-order reaction and the chemical oxygen demand and MO removal on PbO2 electrodes increase with the decrease of duty cycle, which can be attributed to the higher oxygen evolution overpotentials and electrochemical active surface area of PbO2 electrodes.