Issue 5, 2014

Non-precious metal electrocatalysts with high activity for hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline electrolytes

Abstract

A ternary metallic CoNiMo catalyst is electrochemically deposited on a polycrystalline gold (Au) disk electrode using pulse voltammetry, and characterized for hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) activity by temperature-controlled rotating disk electrode measurements in 0.1 M potassium hydroxide (KOH). The catalyst exhibits the highest HOR activity among all non-precious metal catalysts (e.g., 20 fold higher than Ni). At a sufficient loading, the CoNiMo catalyst is expected to outperform Pt and thus provides a promising low cost pathway for alkaline or alkaline membrane fuel cells. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations and parallel H2-temperature programmed desorption (TPD) experiments on structurally much simpler model alloy systems show a trend that CoNiMo has a hydrogen binding energy (HBE) similar to Pt and much lower than Ni, suggesting that the formation of multi-metallic bonds modifies the HBE of Ni and is likely a significant contributing factor for the enhanced HOR activity.

Graphical abstract: Non-precious metal electrocatalysts with high activity for hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline electrolytes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
29 Nov 2013
Accepted
13 Feb 2014
First published
13 Feb 2014

Energy Environ. Sci., 2014,7, 1719-1724

Author version available

Non-precious metal electrocatalysts with high activity for hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline electrolytes

W. Sheng, A. P. Bivens, M. Myint, Z. Zhuang, R. V. Forest, Q. Fang, J. G. Chen and Y. Yan, Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, 7, 1719 DOI: 10.1039/C3EE43899F

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