Amorphization of laser-fabricated ignoble high-entropy alloy nanoparticles and its impact on surface composition and electrochemistry

Abstract

High-entropy alloy nanoparticles (HEA NPs) constitute an interesting material class with high potential as heterogeneous catalysts due to their exceptional compositional and structural tunability and the complex interplay of different element-specific surface sites. Laser ablation in liquids (LAL) is a kinetically controlled synthesis method that allows the generation of colloidal HEA NPs. With CrMnFeCoNi-NPs, a facile control of the NP phase structure, switching between crystalline and amorphous via applied laser pulse duration, has been previously reported, attributed to the different particle solidification times and metalloidic carbon incorporation pathways. However, neither the replacement of the oxygen-affine Mn by the sp²-carbon coupling element Cu, nor the transferability of the pulsed laser fabrication process from bulk target to micropowder feedstock processing, has been studied. In the present work, we use scanning transmission electron microscopy, equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (STEM-EDX), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to demonstrate the transferability of internal phase structure tunability to the CrFeCoNiCu alloy and confirm ns- and ps-pulsed LAL yielding amorphous and crystalline HEA NPs, respectively, with diameters of 10–40 nm. Furthermore, we examine the generation of CrMnFeCoNi and CrFeCoNiCu nanoparticles by scalable, fully continuous ns-pulsed microparticle laser fragmentation in liquid (MP-LFL) using a high-power UV-laser and find the emergence of amorphous phase structures only in the Cu-containing nanoparticles, a phenomenon we attribute to copper-catalyzed carbon incorporation into the HEA NPs. These studies are complemented by a detailed characterization of the surface electrochemistry of the HEA NPs via alkaline cyclic voltammetry (CV) and elemental compositions in surface-near volumes, quantified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). We elucidate that primarily the chemical composition (Mn vs. Cu) and, only to a lower extent, the phase structure (amorphous vs. crystalline) determine the surface potential, electrochemical stability upon multiple CV cycling, and surface element distribution of the particles. Finally, the activity of the HEA NPs in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is evaluated via linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), where we find amorphous CrMnFeCoNi HEA NPs to be more active (lower overpotential, higher current density) than their crystalline counterparts, motivating future application-focused work and transfer to other material systems and relevant reactions.