Adv-SAEC · Advanced Single-Atom Electrocatalyst design: Exploration, Evaluation and Evolution from fundamental insights
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-11-03 → 2024-11-02
- EU contribution
- €183,601
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Advanced Single-Atom Electrocatalyst design: Exploration, Evaluation and Evolution from fundamental insights
Hydrogen are widely recognized as one of the next generation main energy source such as fuel-cell mobility. Currently, the industrial production method are mainly based on so-call water-gas shift reaction which requires also high energy consumption. Green hydrogen which are produced from electrolysis are growing in the potion of global hydrogen source. Search for cheap and abundant alternatives to Pt for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has led to many efforts to develop new catalysts. To our knowledge, no earth-abundant catalyst material comes close to Pt in terms of intrinsic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction. Therefore, one practical strategy is to expose acitve sites as many as possible to increase the turnover frequency (TOF), which is defined as the number of molecules (e.g., H2) produced per second per site. In this project, we investigate the strategy to utilize so-call Single atom alloys (SAAs) as a model system for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acid electrolyte. SAAs are a type of single- site catalyst generally comprised of reactive dopants atomically isolated in a less reactive metal host. The strong host–dopant interactions that lead to mixing are responsible for the thermal stability of SAAs in terms of keeping the dopant sites isolated. The simple and very well-defined nature of the active sites in SAAs makes understanding reaction mechanisms relatively easy and enables a new approach to the rational design of SAA catalysts via complementary surface science model studies and theory. Our fundamental research will contribute to understand the process of hydrogen adsorption, activation, and generation on single Pt atoms, in the long term, in order to rational design of next generation of electrocatalyst.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Single-atom catalysis has become one of the most active new frontier in heterogeneous catalysis, as well as electrocatalysis. Single-atom catalyst (SAC) represents the ultimate in atomic effiency to minimise the consumption of expensive metals (Pt, Pd, Rh, etc.). Single-atom electrocatalyst (SAEC) also draw public attention to develop cleaner energy technique such as fuel cell to replace traditional fossil fuel. Aided by recent advances in synthetic methodologies, characterization techniques and computational modelling, amounts of SACs have been developed which exhibit distinctive performances for amounts of reactions. SACs are known to have specific active centres which are strongly affected by surrounding coordination structure, such that unique opportunities exist for the rational design of new catalysts with high activities, selectivities and stabilities. However, due to inevitable heterogeneities in SACs such as the nature of active sites and their distribution, understand of structure-performance relationship at atomic level and rational designs from fundamental insights are still challenging.Herein, we propose the use of the metal/supports SAC model system to understand the fundamental mechanisms, where we can precisely determine and even selectively modify the active site, and unravel the role of structure in catalytic activity. In this project, I describe how we will determine the sites that robustly anchor metal atoms on typical nitrogen doped carbon support in UHV, test their performance in newly-developing electrochemical cells, and further reveal reaction mechanism by in situ spectroscopy (IRAS, Raman) and theoretical calculation. The outcome will be promising to bridge the complexiy gap and recreate the optimal active sites on real SACs and lead the way into a new era where heterogeneous catalysts are designed based on fundermental insights.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN · WienCoordinatorAustria
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101060834
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50a9093fb&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e514cfd43c&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union