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Ultrasmall Abundant Metal-Based Clusters as Oxygen-Evolving Catalysts.

Authors :
Han XB
Tang XY
Lin Y
Gracia-Espino E
Liu SG
Liang HW
Hu GZ
Zhao XJ
Liao HG
Tan YZ
Wagberg T
Xie SY
Zheng LS
Source :
Journal of the American Chemical Society [J Am Chem Soc] 2019 Jan 09; Vol. 141 (1), pp. 232-239. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Dec 24.
Publication Year :
2019

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction is a crucial step in water electrolysis to develop clean and renewable energy. Although noble metal-based catalysts have demonstrated high activity for the oxygen evolution reaction, their application is limited by their high cost and low availability. Here we report the use of a molecule-to-cluster strategy for preparing ultrasmall trimetallic clusters by using the polyoxometalate molecule as a precursor. Ultrafine (0.8 nm) transition-metal clusters with controllable chemical composition are obtained. The transition-metal clusters enable highly efficient oxygen evolution through water electrolysis in alkaline media, manifested by an overpotential of 192 mV at 10 mA cm <superscript>-2</superscript> , a low Tafel slope of 36 mV dec <superscript>-1</superscript> , and long-term stability for 30 h of electrolysis. We note, however, that besides the excellent performance as an oxygen evolution catalyst, our molecule-to-cluster strategy provides a means to achieve well-defined transition-metal clusters in the subnanometer regime, which potentially can have an impact on several other applications.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1520-5126
Volume :
141
Issue :
1
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
30540181
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.8b09076