Strategies to Break the Scaling Relation toward Enhanced Oxygen Electrocatalysis

By Zhenfeng Huang, Jiajia Song, Shuo Dou, Xiaogan Li, Jiong Wang, Xin Wang. 2019

409 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The vision of a hydrogen economy relies on efficient utilization and production of hydrogen in a hydrogen fuel cell and a water electrolyzer. In both technologies, the sluggish kinetics of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) account for the most efficiency loss because the reactions on catalytic sites are constrained by adsorption-energy scaling relations involving intermediates of *OOH, *O, and *OH (where * denotes the active site). Therefore, a novel paradigm for catalyst design is required by overcoming or circumventing the adsorption-energy scaling relations. In this Review, the fundamentals of oxygen electrocatalysis, including reaction of the mechanism and origin of the adsorption-energy scaling relationship, are first introduced. Crucial strategies to overcome the scaling relations are then summarized. Finally, future research directions in this area are proposed. This work provides guidelines for the rational design of efficient catalysts for oxygen electrocatalysis beyond the limitation posed by scaling relations.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/02ab348e481665c3b1e7da771345c583dd01c5d1