Recently, Institute of New Energy Materials and Technology, Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing, Beijing University of Technology, made a major breakthrough in the single-atom catalyst construction and the application of high efficiency electrocatalytic hydrogen production (HER), and the latest progress has been published in the international journals Advanced Science and Nature Communications.
Peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality are the core goals of China national economy in the long-term development plan. The research group led by Professor Hao Wang and Associate Professor Chang Bao Han has made major breakthroughs in the research of electrocatalytic hydrogen production materials and technologies in the sustainable energy field - "green hydrogen". Following the development of highly efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen production nanocomposites (PtSA-Co(OH)2@Ag NWs, Energy & Environmental Science, 2020, 13, 3082-3092), the group took the vacancy engineering strategy to synthesize a new Ni3S2 based Pt single-atom catalyst. By optimizing the local electric field distribution and the electron structure of the material, the adsorption ability of the catalyst for H2O and the desorption / adsorption ability for H are improved. Consequently, the mass activity of the catalyst for HER under alkaline conditions is 27 times higher than that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst. The corresponding achievement titled "Atomically Dispersed Platinum Modulated by Sulfur as an Efficient Electrocatalyt for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction" was recently published in the international journal Advanced Science (Advanced Science, 2021, 2100347). Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing of Beijing University of Technology is the only institution to finish the thesis. The doctor Kai Ling Zhou is the first author. Professor Hao Wang and Associate Professor Chang Bao Han are the corresponding authors.
Schematic illustration of nanostructure and efficient hydrogen production of PtSA-NiO/Ni
Further, to solve the problem of the limited improvement of Pt based catalyst in alkaline conditions for HER caused by the additional H2O dissociation energy, the group created a highly-efficient electrocatalyst by coupling single-atom Pt with NiO/Ni heterojunction (PtSA-NiO/Ni). The dual active sites consisting of metallic Ni sites and O vacancies modified NiO sites near the interfaces of NiO/Ni heterostructure in PtSA-NiO/Ni show the preferred adsorption affinity toward OH* and H*, respectively, which efficiently facilitates water adsorption and reaching a barrier-free water dissociation step. Additionally, anchoring Ptsingle atoms at the interfaces of NiO/Ni heterostructure induces more free electrons on Pt sites due to the elevated occupation of the Pt 5d orbital at Fermi level and the more suitable H binding energy (ΔGH*, -0.07 eV), which efficiently promotes the H* conversion and H2 desorption, thus accelerating overall alkaline HER. As a result, the fabricated PtSA-NiO/Ni catalyst exhibits outstanding HER activity with a quite lower overpotential of 26 mV at 10 mA cm-2 in 1 M KOH. The mass activity of PtSA-NiO/Ni is 20.6 A mg-1 Pt at the overpotential of 100 mV, which is 41 times greater than that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst, significantly outperforming the reported catalysts. This work provides a design principle toward single-atom catalyst systems for efficient alkaline HER. The corresponding achievement titled "Platinum Single-Atom Catalyst Coupled with Transition Metal/metal Oxide Heterostructure for Accelerating Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction" was recently published in the international journal Nature Communications (Nature Communications, 2021, 12, 3783). Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing of Beijing University of Technology is the only institution to finish the work, the doctor Kai Ling Zhou and Zelin Wang are the first authors, and associate professor Chang Bao Han, associate professor Xiaoxing Ke and professor Hao Wang are the corresponding authors.
This research is supported by the Key Laboratory of New Functional Materials of Beijing University of Technology, Ministry of Education, and Beijing Key Laboratory of Microstructure and Properties of Advanced Materials of Beijing University of Technology.
