Title: Revealing the Contribution of Individual Factors to Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Catalytic Activity

Abstract

Abstract For the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the electrical properties of catalysts can play an important role in influencing the overall catalytic activity. This is particularly important for semiconducting HER catalysts such as MoS ₂ , which has been extensively studied over the last decade. Herein, on‐chip microreactors on two model catalysts, semiconducting MoS ₂ and semimetallic WTe ₂ , are employed to extract the effects of individual factors and study their relations with the HER catalytic activity. It is shown that electron injection at the catalyst/current collector interface and intralayer and interlayer charge transport within the catalyst can be more important than thermodynamic energy considerations. For WTe ₂ , the site‐dependent activities and the relations of the pure thermodynamics to the overall activity are measured and established, as the microreactors allow precise measurements of the type and area of the catalytic sites. The approach presents opportunities to study electrochemical reactions systematically to help establish rational design principles for future electrocatalysts.

Authors:

Zhou, Yu ^[1]; Silva, Jose Luis ^[2]; Woods, John M. ^[1]; Pondick, Joshua V. ^[1]; Feng, Qingliang ^[3]; Liang, Zhixiu ^[4]; Liu, Wen ^[5]; Lin, Li ^[6]; Deng, Bingchen ^[7]; Brena, Barbara ^[2]; Xia, Fengnian ^[7]; Peng, Hailin ^[6]; Liu, Zhongfan ^[6]; Wang, Hailiang ^[5]; Araujo, Carlos Moyses ^[2]; Cha, Judy J.  ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Yale University New Haven CT 06511 USA, Energy Sciences Institute Yale West Campus West Haven CT 06525 USA
2. Materials Theory Division Department of Physics and Astronomy Uppsala University Box 516 75120 Uppsala Sweden
3. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi'an 710072 China
4. Chemistry Department Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton NY 11973 USA
5. Energy Sciences Institute Yale West Campus West Haven CT 06525 USA, Department of Chemistry Yale University New Haven CT 06511 USA
6. College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering Peking University Beijing 100871 P. R. China
7. Department of Electrical Engineering Yale University New Haven CT 06511 USA

Publication Date:

Sat Mar 24 00:00:00 EDT 2018

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE

OSTI Identifier:

1429512

Grant/Contract Number:  

DE‐SC0014476

Resource Type:

Publisher's Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Advanced Materials

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Advanced Materials Journal Volume: 30 Journal Issue: 18; Journal ID: ISSN 0935-9648

Publisher:

Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)

Country of Publication:

Germany

Language:

English