Nucleation growth quenching for superior cluster catalysts
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Cluster catalysts are rapidly growing into an important sub-field in heterogeneous catalysis, owing to their distinct geometric structure, neighboring metal sites, and unique electronic structure. Although the thermodynamics and kinetics of the formation of nanoparticles have been largely investigated, the precise synthesis of clusters in wet chemical methods still faces great challenges. In the study, a quenching strategy of asymmetric temperature in solution for the rapid generation of vacancy-defect rich clusters is reported. The quenching process can be used to synthesize multitudinous metal compound clusters, including metal oxides, fluorides, oxygen-sulfur compounds, and tungstate. For oxygen evolution reaction (OER), IrO2 clusters with abundant oxygen vacancies were obtained and uniformly dispersed in the solution. Compared to commercial IrO2, the prepared IrO2 cluster can be directly loaded on carbon paper and used as binder-free electrodes, which exhibit higher OER activity and long-term operational stability in alkaline electrolytes. The quenching strategy provides a simple and efficient method for the synthesis of clusters, which has tremendous potential for industrial-scale preparation and application, especially can be further applied to flow electrochemical generators.
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Nucleation growth quenching for superior cluster catalysts
Abstract
Cluster catalysts are rapidly growing into an important sub-field in heterogeneous catalysis, owing to their distinct geometric structure, neighboring metal sites, and unique electronic structure. Although the thermodynamics and kinetics of the formation of nanoparticles have been largely investigated, the precise synthesis of clusters in wet chemical methods still faces great challenges. In the study, a quenching strategy of asymmetric temperature in solution for the rapid generation of vacancy-defect rich clusters is reported. The quenching process can be used to synthesize multitudinous metal compound clusters, including metal oxides, fluorides, oxygen-sulfur compounds, and tungstate. For oxygen evolution reaction (OER), IrO2 clusters with abundant oxygen vacancies were obtained and uniformly dispersed in the solution. Compared to commercial IrO2, the prepared IrO2 cluster can be directly loaded on carbon paper and used as binder-free electrodes, which exhibit higher OER activity and long-term operational stability in alkaline electrolytes. The quenching strategy provides a simple and efficient method for the synthesis of clusters, which has tremendous potential for industrial-scale preparation and application, especially can be further applied to flow electrochemical generators.
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Acknowledgements
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51902027, 51788104, 61874014, 61874013, 61974011, and 61976025), the National Basic Research of China (Nos. 2016YFE0102200 and 2018YFB0104404), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. JQ19005), Fund of State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China), BUPT Excellent Ph.D. Students Foundation (No. CX2020119), Guangdong Hydrogen Energy Institute of WHUT under Guangdong Key Areas Research and Development Program (No. 2019B090909003), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2020B1515120042), and Foshan Xianhu Laboratory of the Advanced Energy Science and Technology Guangdong Laboratory (No. XHD2020-002).
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