Direct correlation of oxygen adsorption on platinum-electrolyte interfaces with the activity in the oxygen reduction reaction

The adsorption of oxygen molecules to Pt nanostructures in solution is shown to predict the relative ORR activity in fuel cells.
The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on platinum catalysts is essential in fuel cells. Quantitative predictions of the relative ORR activity in experiments, in the range of 1 to 50 times, have remained challenging because of incomplete mechanistic understanding and lack of computational tools to account for the associated small differences in activation energies (