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A single-atom library for guided monometallic and concentration-complex multimetallic designs

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 681–688 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Atomically dispersed single-atom catalysts have the potential to bridge heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. Dozens of single-atom catalysts have been developed, and they exhibit notable catalytic activity and selectivity that are not achievable on metal surfaces. Although promising, there is limited knowledge about the boundaries for the monometallic single-atom phase space, not to mention multimetallic phase spaces. Here, single-atom catalysts based on 37 monometallic elements are synthesized using a dissolution-and-carbonization method, characterized and analysed to build the largest reported library of single-atom catalysts. In conjunction with in situ studies, we uncover unified principles on the oxidation state, coordination number, bond length, coordination element and metal loading of single atoms to guide the design of single-atom catalysts with atomically dispersed atoms anchored on N-doped carbon. We utilize the library to open up complex multimetallic phase spaces for single-atom catalysts and demonstrate that there is no fundamental limit on using single-atom anchor sites as structural units to assemble concentration-complex single-atom catalyst materials with up to 12 different elements. Our work offers a single-atom library spanning from monometallic to concentration-complex multimetallic materials for the rational design of single-atom catalysts.

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Fig. 1: Synthesis and characterization of monometallic SACs.
Fig. 2: Correlation analyses for the monometallic SAC properties.
Fig. 3: Temperature-induced evolution dynamics for SACs.
Fig. 4: Characterization and OER performance of concentration-complex SAC containing 12 different metallic elements.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper. Any other data are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under award number CHE-1900401 and the start-up funding of H.L.X provided by UC Irvine. This research used resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials as well as 7-BM and 23-ID-2 beamlines of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, which are two US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facilities operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract DE-SC0012704. It also used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. The XAFS/EXAFS spectra obtained from beamline TPS 44A at the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) and the soft XAS data obtained from beamline TLS-BL24A at NSRRC are appreciated. This work made use of facilities and instrumentation at the UC Irvine Materials Research Institute (IMRI), which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation through the UC Irvine Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-2011967). W.L., H.L., J.L. and J.-C.Z. are unfunded.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Lili Han, Hao Cheng, Wei Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Lili Han, Hao Cheng & Huolin L. Xin

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin Key Lab of Photoelectric Materials & Devices, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China

    Wei Liu, Haoqiang Li & Jun Luo

  3. Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Pengfei Ou

  4. Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Ruoqian Lin, Ashley R. Head & Xiao Tong

  5. Department of Physics, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Hsiao-Tsu Wang & Way-Faung Pong

  6. National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Chih-Wen Pao & Chia-Hsin Wang

  7. X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Cheng-Jun Sun

  8. Shenzhen Institute for Advanced Study, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Shenzhen, China

    Jun Luo

  9. Department of Physics and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China

    Jin-Cheng Zheng

  10. Department of Physics and Department of New Energy Science and Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Jin-Cheng Zheng

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  1. Lili Han
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Contributions

H.L.X. conceived the idea. J.L., J.-C.Z. and H.L.X. co-supervised the project and revised the paper. L.H. designed the experiments and wrote the paper. H.C. performed the XANES and EXAFS fittings and analyses. W.L. and H.L. synthesized the samples. P.O. performed the DFT calculations of formation energy. L.H., R.L., H.-T.W., C.-W.P., C.-J.S., C.H.W. and W.-F.P. took and analysed the soft XAS and XAFS spectra. L.H., A.R.H. and X.T. performed the in situ XPS experiments. All authors discussed the results and implications at all stages.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jun Luo, Jin-Cheng Zheng or Huolin L. Xin.

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Nature Materials thanks Taeghwan Hyeon and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Han, L., Cheng, H., Liu, W. et al. A single-atom library for guided monometallic and concentration-complex multimetallic designs. Nat. Mater. 21, 681–688 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01252-y

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