Spatial Structure Engineering in Enhancing Performance of Mosaic Electrocatalysts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mosaic catalyst strategy that enhances electrocatalytic performance by engineering spatial structures, leading to significant activity improvements across different catalysts and reactions.

Contribution

The study develops a novel spatial structure engineering approach for electrocatalysts, demonstrating its effectiveness in boosting catalytic activity and general applicability.

Findings

Mosaic Pt catalysts show 11 times higher activity for HER than uniform Pt.

Enhanced mass transfer and electric field contribute to performance gains.

Strategy is applicable to other catalysts and reactions.

Abstract

Understanding the mechanism and developing strategies toward efficient electrocatalysis at gas-liquidsolid interfaces are important yet challenging. In the past decades, researchers have devoted many efforts to improving catalyst activity by modulating electronic properties of catalysts in terms of chemical components and physical features. Here we develop a mosaic catalyst strategy to improve activity of electrocatalysts by engineering their spatial structures. Taking Pt catalyst as an example, the mosaic Pt leads to high catalytic performance, showing a specific activity 11 times higher than uniform Pt films for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), as well as higher current densities than commercial Pt/C and uniform Pt films. Such a strategy is found to be general to other catalysts (e.g., twodimensional PtS) and other reactions (e.g., oxygen evolution reaction). The improved catalytic performance of the mosaic catalysts is attributed to enhanced mass transferability and local electric field, both are determined by the occupation ratio of catalysts. Our work shines new light on manipulating electrocatalysis from the perspective of the spatial structure of catalyst, which would guide the design of efficient catalysts for heterogeneous reactions.