Dealloying-driven nanoporous palladium with superior electrochemical actuation performance

Abstract

Metal–hydrogen (in particular, Pd–H) interactions have been receiving considerable attention over the past 150 years within the scope of hydrogen storage, catalytic hydrogenation, hydrogen embrittlement and hydrogen-induced interfacial failure. Here, for the first time, we show that the coupling of hydrogen adsorption and absorption could trigger giant reversible strain in bulk nanoporous Pd (np-Pd) in a weakly adsorbed NaF electrolyte. The bulk np-Pd with a hierarchically porous structure and a ligament/channel size of ∼10 nm was fabricated using a dealloying strategy with compositional/structural design of the precursor. The np-Pd actuator exhibits a giant reversible strain of up to 3.28% (stroke of 137.8 μm), which is a 252% enhancement in comparison to the state-of-the-art value of 1.3% in np-AuPt. The strain rate (∼10⁻⁵ s⁻¹) of np-Pd is two orders of magnitude higher than that of current metallic actuators. Moreover, the volume-/mass-specific strain energy density (10.71 MJ m⁻³/3811 J kg⁻¹) of np-Pd reaches the highest level compared with that of previously reported actuator materials. The outstanding actuation performance of np-Pd could be attributed to the coupling of hydrogen adsorption/absorption and its unique hierarchically nanoporous structure. Our findings provide valuable information for the design of novel high-performance metallic actuators.