(295c) How to Dress an Electrocatalyst

In honor of the 2020 Wilhelm Award Symposium recipient, Professor Jingguang G. Chen, this presentation will discuss the design and use of ultrathin overlayers for electrocatalytic applications. Such ultrathin overlayers, typically ranging in thickness from a single atomic layer to 10’s of nanometers, can be used to tune the properties and performance of catalytic active sites through a variety of mechanisms. First, I will briefly highlight early work in this area by this Professor Chen, who’s pioneering work on monolayer bimetallic (electro)catalysts helped to lay the groundwork for understanding how the electronic structure and catalytic properties of metal monolayers vary as a function of composition and physical structure.[1][2][3] Next, I will describe design principles for an emerging class of electrocatalysts for which ultrathin permeable oxide overlayers are deposited on top of the active electrocatalyst such that the electrocatalytic reaction(s) of interest occur at the buried interface between the overlayer and active component.[4][5][6] Such overlayers present exciting opportunities to enhance electrocatalyst stability and tune selectivity/activity in ways that are generally not possible with conventional electrocatalysts. Collectively, the use of ultrathin catalytic metal overlayers and/or inert oxide overlayers holds great potential to tailor the properties and performance of electrocatalytic materials for a wide range of electrochemical reactions.

References

[1] J. R. Kitchin, J.G. Chen, et al., Surface Science, vol. 544, 295-308, 2003.

[2] J.G. Chen, C. Menning, and M.B. Zellner, Surface Science Reports, vol. 63, 201-254, 2008.

[3] D.V. Esposito and J.G. Chen, Energy & Environmental Science, vol. 4, 3900-3912, 2011.

[4] D.V. Esposito, ACS Catalysis, 2018, vol. 8, pp 457–465.

[5] N. Y. Labrador, et al.,, ACS Catalysis, vol. 8, 1767–1778, 2018.

[6] M.S. Beatty, et al., ACS Applied Energy Materials, vol. 3, 12338-12350, 2020.