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

In this work, PbO 2 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 PbO 2 electrodes. The steady-state polarization curves and accelerated life tests demonstrate that the oxygen evolution overpotential and service life of PbO 2 electrodes increase with the decrease of duty cycle, the PbO 2 electrodes prepared at 20 % duty cycle possess highest oxygen evolution overpotential and service life, and the service life of PbO 2 electrodes prepared at 20 % duty cycle reaches 71 h which is almost two times longer than that of the PbO 2 electrodes prepared by direct electrodeposition. The bulk electrolysis shows that the methyl orange (MO) degradation on the PbO 2 electrodes prepared by pulse electrodeposition is the pseudo-first-order reaction and the chemical oxygen demand and MO removal on PbO 2 electrodes increase with the decrease of duty cycle, which can be attributed to the higher oxygen evolution overpotentials and electrochemical active surface area of PbO 2 electrodes.