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Improving the hydrogen oxidation reaction rate by promotion of hydroxyl adsorption

Nature Chemistry volume 5, pages 300–306 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The development of hydrogen-based energy sources as viable alternatives to fossil-fuel technologies has revolutionized clean energy production using fuel cells. However, to date, the slow rate of the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) in alkaline environments has hindered advances in alkaline fuel cell systems. Here, we address this by studying the trends in the activity of the HOR in alkaline environments. We demonstrate that it can be enhanced more than fivefold compared to state-of-the-art platinum catalysts. The maximum activity is found for materials (Ir and Pt0.1Ru0.9) with an optimal balance between the active sites that are required for the adsorption/dissociation of H2 and for the adsorption of hydroxyl species (OHad). We propose that the more oxophilic sites on Ir (defects) and PtRu material (Ru atoms) electrodes facilitate the adsorption of OHad species. Those then react with the hydrogen intermediates (Had) that are adsorbed on more noble surface sites.

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Figure 1: Determining the role of OH– on the HOR in alkaline solutions.
Figure 2: Determining the role of OHad–metal energetics on the rate of HOR in alkaline solutions.
Figure 3: Bifunctional catalysts for the HOR in alkaline solution.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences, US Department of Energy (contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, 60439, Illinois, USA

    Dusan Strmcnik, Masanobu Uchimura, Chao Wang, Ram Subbaraman, Nemanja Danilovic, Dennis van der Vliet, Arvydas P. Paulikas, Vojislav R. Stamenkovic & Nenad M. Markovic

  2. Advanced Materials Laboratory, Nissan Research Center, Kanagawa, 237-8532, Japan

    Masanobu Uchimura

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  1. Dusan Strmcnik
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Contributions

D.S. and N.M.M. conceived and designed the experiments. D.S., M.U., D.v.D., N.D. and A.P.P. performed the experiments. C.W. contributed materials (Ir nanoparticles). D.S., R.S., V.R.S. and N.M.M. discussed the results and co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Nenad M. Markovic.

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Strmcnik, D., Uchimura, M., Wang, C. et al. Improving the hydrogen oxidation reaction rate by promotion of hydroxyl adsorption. Nature Chem 5, 300–306 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1574

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