Ultrasmall Abundant Metal-Based Clusters as Oxygen-Evolving Catalysts

Here we report the use of a molecule-to-cluster strategy for preparing ultrasmall (~8 Å) trimetallic Co-Fe-W clusters with high efficiency for the OER in alkaline media. Besides the excellent performance as OER catalyst, our molecule-to-cluster strategy allows to achieve well-defined transition-metal clusters in the subnanometer regime.

Xin-Bao Han, Xing-Yan Tang, Yue Lin, Eduardo Gracia-Espino, San-Gui Liu, Hai-Wei Liang, Guang-Zhi Hu, Xin-Jing Zhao, Hong-Gang Liao, Yuan-Zhi Tan, Thomas Wagberg, Su-Yuan Xie, Lan-Sun Zheng

"Ultrasmall Abundant Metal-Based Clusters as Oxygen-Evolving Catalysts"
J. Am. Chem. Soc. (2019) DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b09076

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction is a crucial step in water electrolysis to develop clean and renewable energy. Although noble metal-based catalysts have demonstrated high activity for the oxygen evolution reaction, their application is limited by their high cost and low availability. Here we report the use of a molecule-to-cluster strategy for preparing ultrasmall trimetallic clusters by using the polyoxometalate molecule as a precursor. Ultrafine (0.8 nm) transition-metal clusters with controllable chemical composition are obtained. The transition-metal clusters enable highly efficient oxygen evolution through water electrolysis in alkaline media, manifested by an overpotential of 192 mV at 10 mA cm–2, a low Tafel slope of 36 mV dec–1, and long-term stability for 30 h of electrolysis. We note, however, that besides the excellent performance as an oxygen evolution catalyst, our molecule-to-cluster strategy provides a means to achieve well-defined transition-metal clusters in the subnanometer regime, which potentially can have an impact on several other applications.