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SINGLE-ATOM ELECTROCATALYSIS

Formic acid oxidation boosted by Rh single atoms

Nature Nanotechnology volume 15, pages 346–347 (2020)Cite this article

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Atomically dispersed Rh on N-doped carbon exhibits promising electrocatalytic properties for formic acid oxidation while Rh nanoparticles are inert towards this reaction. The Rh single atoms exhibit high tolerance to CO poisoning compared to Rh nanoparticles.

By employing single Rh atoms as electrocatalysts for formic acid oxidation, Xiong et al. are able to show that the mass activity can be significantly enhanced by at least an order of magnitude compared to the Pd and Pt nanoparticles typically used for this reaction. It may be expected that the catalytic activity should be markedly improved for each metal by scaling down the size of the material from bulk to nanoscale and even to single atoms. However, it should be noted that Rh nanoparticles are not as active as Pd and Pt nanoparticles originally (Fig. 1). Furthermore, Pd and Pt single atoms prepared by the same procedure are surprisingly inert, although these nanoparticles would be the most favoured catalysts for this reaction. These findings illustrate that simply downsizing a catalytic metal cannot be an ultimate solution. Therefore, as electrocatalysts for this reaction, Rh single atoms combine two favourable aspects: (1) the reduced precious metal content in a catalyst material and (2) enhanced catalytic behaviour from a fundamental perspective (Fig. 1).

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of Rh catalytic activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Dohyung Kim & Matteo Cargnello

  2. SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Matteo Cargnello

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  1. Dohyung Kim
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  2. Matteo Cargnello
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Correspondence to Matteo Cargnello.

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Kim, D., Cargnello, M. Formic acid oxidation boosted by Rh single atoms. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 346–347 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0659-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0659-8

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