Polymetallic amorphous materials: research progress in synthetic strategies and electrocatalytic applications

Abstract

Amorphous materials, being in a metastable state and having many “dangling bonds”, are more active than crystalline materials. Therefore, in recent years, many facile preparation methods and suitable polymetallic amorphous materials have been developed for electrocatalytic reactions to improve electrochemical performance. Even though there has been a substantial improvement in product selectivity and stability, the utilization of precious metals hinders industrial progress, posing a significant challenge in cost reduction. To promote the use of amorphous materials in electrocatalytic reactions, it is necessary to determine key strategies and potential solutions by understanding recent advances, challenges faced, and future directions. This review briefly summarizes the development of amorphous bulk materials and amorphous nanomaterials, as well as their excellent mechanical and chemical properties. Then, a detailed overview is given on the synthesis strategies for amorphous alloys, including not only the more common melt quenching and deposition methods, but also some new techniques developed in recent years, such as weak reducing agent reduction and supercritical CO₂ construction of amorphous alloys. A focus is placed on the recent design strategies for several types of electrochemical reactions such as the HER, OER, CO₂RR, HOR, URR, etc. Based on this, the current problems are identified and future development directions are proposed.