Issue 47, 2020

On the electronic structure and hydrogen evolution reaction activity of platinum group metal-based high-entropy-alloy nanoparticles

Abstract

We report the synthesis of high-entropy-alloy (HEA) nanoparticles (NPs) consisting of five platinum group metals (Ru, Rh, Pd, Ir and Pt) through a facile one-pot polyol process. We investigated the electronic structure of HEA NPs using hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, which is the first direct observation of the electronic structure of HEA NPs. Significantly, the HEA NPs possessed a broad valence band spectrum without any obvious peaks. This implies that the HEA NPs have random atomic configurations leading to a variety of local electronic structures. We examined the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and observed a remarkably high HER activity on HEA NPs. At an overpotential of 25 mV, the turnover frequencies of HEA NPs were 9.5 and 7.8 times higher than those of a commercial Pt catalyst in 0.05 M H2SO4 and 1.0 M KOH electrolytes, respectively. Moreover, the HEA NPs showed almost no loss during a cycling test and were much more stable than the commercial Pt catalyst. Our findings on HEA NPs may provide a new paradigm for the design of catalysts.

Graphical abstract: On the electronic structure and hydrogen evolution reaction activity of platinum group metal-based high-entropy-alloy nanoparticles

Associated articles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
26 apr. 2020
Accepted
05 ágú. 2020
First published
11 ágú. 2020
This article is Open Access

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

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 12731-12736

On the electronic structure and hydrogen evolution reaction activity of platinum group metal-based high-entropy-alloy nanoparticles

D. Wu, K. Kusada, T. Yamamoto, T. Toriyama, S. Matsumura, I. Gueye, O. Seo, J. Kim, S. Hiroi, O. Sakata, S. Kawaguchi, Y. Kubota and H. Kitagawa, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 12731 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC02351E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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