Issue 41, 2022

A fourteen-component high-entropy alloy@oxide bifunctional electrocatalyst with a record-low ΔE of 0.61 V for highly reversible Zn–air batteries

Abstract

Nanostructured high-entropy materials such as alloys, oxides, etc., are attracting extensive attention because of their widely tunable surface electronic structure/catalytic activity through mixing different elements in one system. To further tune the catalytic performance and multifunctionality, the designed fabrication of multicomponent high-entropy nanocomposites such as high-entropy alloy@high-entropy oxides (HEA@HEO) should be very promising. In this work, we design a two-step alloying–dealloying strategy to synthesize ultra-small HEA nanoclusters (∼2 nm) loaded on nanoporous HEO nanowires, and the compositions of both the HEA and HEO can be adjusted separately. To demonstrate this concept, a seven-component HEA (PtPdAuAgCuIrRu) clusters@seven-component HEO (AlNiCoFeCrMoTi)3O4 was prepared, which is highly active for both oxygen evolution and reduction reactions. Our comprehensive experimental results and first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations clearly show that better oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance is obtained by optimizing the composition of the HEO support, and the seven-component HEA nanocluster is much more active for the ORR when compared with pure Pt due to the modified surface electronic structure. Specifically, the high-entropy composite exhibits an OER activity comparable to the best reported value, and the ORR activity exceeded the performance of commercial Pt/C in alkaline solutions with a record-low bifunctional ΔE of 0.61 V in 0.1 M KOH solution. This work shows an important route to prepare complex HEA@HEO nanocomposites with tuned catalytic performance for multifunctional catalysis and energy conversion.

Graphical abstract: A fourteen-component high-entropy alloy@oxide bifunctional electrocatalyst with a record-low ΔE of 0.61 V for highly reversible Zn–air batteries

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
10 Aug 2022
Accepted
24 Aug 2022
First published
24 Aug 2022
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2022,13, 12056-12064

A fourteen-component high-entropy alloy@oxide bifunctional electrocatalyst with a record-low ΔE of 0.61 V for highly reversible Zn–air batteries

Z. Jin, X. Zhou, Y. Hu, X. Tang, K. Hu, K. M. Reddy, X. Lin and H. Qiu, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 12056 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC04461G

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