MECHANISM OF ATOMIC-REGULATION OF HIGHLY EFFICIENT PLATINUM-BASED MATERIALS TOWARDS ELECTROCATALYTIC HYDROGEN EVOLUTION REACTION

Abstract

Current challenges of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are the design of cost-effective and highly efficient electrocatalysts to improve the activity, thus trying to lower the noble metal usage and increase the atomic utilization is important. One frequently used method of adjusting the electronic properties of Pt as well as introducing abundant active sites is through the creation of Pt-based transition alloys, thereby boosting the HER catalytic activity. In addition, SACs with maximum atomic utilization and unique electronic structure are reported to exhibit extraordinary performance with respect to benchmark counterparts. Moreover, the dual-atom catalysts are able to exert synergistic effect to optimize the electronic structure, thus further enhancing the catalytic performance with respective to single atom catalysts. In this thesis, we investigate the potential and reaction mechanism of Pt-based alloys, single atom Pt, and dual atom Pt as HER electrocatalysts.