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Nano Research 2022, 15(2): 1564-1569 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3702-7
Research Article | Issue | Published: 19 August 2021

Calibrating SECCM measurements by means of a nanoelectrode ruler. The intrinsic oxygen reduction activity of PtNi catalyst nanoparticles

Show Author's Information Emmanuel Batsa Tetteh1,§,  Tobias Löffler1,§,  Tsvetan Tarnev1,  Thomas Quast1,  Patrick Wilde1,  Harshitha Barike Aiyappa1,  Simon Schumacher2,  Corina Andronescu2,  Richard D. Tilley3,  Xingxing Chen4( ),  Wolfgang Schuhmann1( )
Analytical Chemistry–Center for Electrochemical Sciences, Faculty of Chemistry and BiochemistryRuhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr150, D-44780 BochumGermany
Chemical Technology Ⅲ, Faculty of Chemistry and CENIDE-Center for NanointegrationUniversity Duisburg EssenCarl Benz Str. 199, D-47057 DuisburgGermany
School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicineUniversity of New South WalesSydney2052Australia
Research Group of Functional Materials for Electrochemical Energy ConversionSchool of Chemical Engineering, University of Science and Technology LiaoningAnshan114051China

§ Emmanuel Batsa Tetteh and Tobias Löffler contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
single entity electrochemistry, intrinsic electrocatalytic activity, nanoelectrochemistry, scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM), PtNi nanoparticles, alkaline medium
Topics:
Catalytic
Cite this article:
Tetteh EB, Löffler T, Tarnev T, et al. Calibrating SECCM measurements by means of a nanoelectrode ruler. The intrinsic oxygen reduction activity of PtNi catalyst nanoparticles. Nano Research, 2022, 15(2): 1564-1569. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3702-7
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) is increasingly applied to determine the intrinsic catalytic activity of single electrocatalyst particle. This is especially feasible if the catalyst nanoparticles are large enough that they can be found and counted in post-SECCM scanning electron microscopy images. Evidently, this becomes impossible for very small nanoparticles and hence, a catalytic current measured in one landing zone of the SECCM droplet cannot be correlated to the exact number of catalyst particles. We show, that by introducing a ruler method employing a carbon nanoelectrode decorated with a countable number of the same catalyst particles from which the catalytic activity can be determined, the activity determined using SECCM from many spots can be converted in the intrinsic catalytic activity of a certain number of catalyst nanoparticles.


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About this article

Calibrating SECCM measurements by means of a nanoelectrode ruler. The intrinsic oxygen reduction activity of PtNi catalyst nanoparticles

Show Author's information Emmanuel Batsa Tetteh1,§, Tobias Löffler1,§, Tsvetan Tarnev1, Thomas Quast1, Patrick Wilde1, Harshitha Barike Aiyappa1, Simon Schumacher2, Corina Andronescu2, Richard D. Tilley3, Xingxing Chen4( ), Wolfgang Schuhmann1( )
Analytical Chemistry–Center for Electrochemical Sciences, Faculty of Chemistry and BiochemistryRuhr University Bochum, Universitätsstr150, D-44780 BochumGermany
Chemical Technology Ⅲ, Faculty of Chemistry and CENIDE-Center for NanointegrationUniversity Duisburg EssenCarl Benz Str. 199, D-47057 DuisburgGermany
School of Chemistry and Australian Centre for NanoMedicineUniversity of New South WalesSydney2052Australia
Research Group of Functional Materials for Electrochemical Energy ConversionSchool of Chemical Engineering, University of Science and Technology LiaoningAnshan114051China

§ Emmanuel Batsa Tetteh and Tobias Löffler contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) is increasingly applied to determine the intrinsic catalytic activity of single electrocatalyst particle. This is especially feasible if the catalyst nanoparticles are large enough that they can be found and counted in post-SECCM scanning electron microscopy images. Evidently, this becomes impossible for very small nanoparticles and hence, a catalytic current measured in one landing zone of the SECCM droplet cannot be correlated to the exact number of catalyst particles. We show, that by introducing a ruler method employing a carbon nanoelectrode decorated with a countable number of the same catalyst particles from which the catalytic activity can be determined, the activity determined using SECCM from many spots can be converted in the intrinsic catalytic activity of a certain number of catalyst nanoparticles.

Keywords: single entity electrochemistry, intrinsic electrocatalytic activity, nanoelectrochemistry, scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM), PtNi nanoparticles, alkaline medium

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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 18 April 2021
Revised: 19 June 2021
Accepted: 20 June 2021
Published: 19 August 2021
Issue date: February 2022

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement CasCat [833408]) as well as from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie MSCA-ITN Single-Entity Nanoelectro-chemistry, Sentinel [812398]. S. S. and C. A. acknowledge the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the project [440951282]. X. X. C. acknowledges financial support from the Liaoning BaiQianWan Talents Program, China (No. 2019B042), and the Excellent Young Scientific and Technological Talents Project of Educational Department of Liaoning Province, China (No. 2020LNQN07). We acknowledge Prof. Patrick Unwin from the University of Warwick for providing the initial control software (WEC-SPM) for our SECCM experiments.

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