Abstract
Lanthanide (Ln) elements have distinctive electronic structures and chemical behaviours that can be used to tune electrocatalytic performance when they are introduced as isolated atomic modifiers. However, their broader use remains limited because their high reactivity and ultralow reduction potentials make it difficult to develop general synthesis strategies that can atomically disperse Ln atoms on diverse substrates. Here we develop a molten-nitrite method that yields Ln single-atom catalysts, permitting the atomic isolation of multiple lanthanides on various supports, including metals, metal oxides and carbon materials. Mechanistic insights obtained from systematic control experiments indicate that Ln single-atom catalyst formation in molten nitrites is dictated by three factors: the Lux–Flood basicity effect, mass-diffusion resistance and molten-salt shielding. As a demonstration, Dy1/Pt shows an overpotential of 20 mV at a current density of −10 mA cm−2 in 0.5-M H2SO4 for acidic hydrogen evolution, which is superior to commercial Pt/C catalysts. This work establishes a framework for synthesizing Ln single-atom catalysts and positions molten-nitrite systems as a versatile platform for electrocatalyst synthesis.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$32.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to the full article PDF.
USD 39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the article and its Supplementary Information, and are also available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
References
Li, C. et al. Rare earth-based nanomaterials in electrocatalysis. Coord. Chem. Rev. 489, 215204 (2023).
Lucas, J. et al. Rare earths: science, technology, production and use. MRS Bull. 40, 452–453 (2015).
Wang, X. et al. Embedding oxophilic rare-earth single atom in platinum nanoclusters for efficient hydrogen electro-oxidation. Nat. Commun. 14, 3767 (2023).
Feng, J. et al. CO2 electrolysis to multi-carbon products in strong acid at ampere-current levels on La-Cu spheres with channels. Nat. Commun. 15, 4821 (2024).
Escudero-Escribano, M. et al. Pt5Gd as a highly active and stable catalyst for oxygen electroreduction. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 134, 16476–16479 (2012).
Escudero-Escribano, M. et al. Tuning the activity of Pt alloy electrocatalysts by means of the lanthanide contraction. Science 352, 73–76 (2016).
Li, M. et al. Oxophilic Tm-sites in MoS2 trigger thermodynamic spontaneous water dissociation for enhanced hydrogen evolution. Adv. Energy Mater. 14, 2401716 (2024).
Mao, Q. et al. High-density rare-earth single-atom-triggered unconventional transition of adsorption configuration on La1Pd monatomic alloy metallene for sustainable electrocatalytic alkynol semi-hydrogenation. Adv. Funct. Mater. 34, 2404648 (2024).
Li, L. et al. Lanthanide-regulating Ru-O covalency optimizes acidic oxygen evolution electrocatalysis. Nat. Commun. 15, 4974 (2024).
Zhang, S. et al. Lanthanide electronic perturbation in Pt-Ln (La, Ce, Pr and Nd) alloys for enhanced methanol oxidation reaction activity. Energy Environ. Sci. 14, 5911–5918 (2021).
Sun, Y. et al. Boosting CO2 electroreduction to C2H4 via unconventional hybridization: high-order Ce4+4f and O2p interaction in Ce-Cu2O for stabilizing Cu+. ACS Nano 17, 13974–13984 (2023).
Feng, J. et al. Improving CO2-to-C2+ product electroreduction efficiency via atomic lanthanide dopant-induced tensile-strained CuOx catalysts. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 145, 9857–9866 (2023).
Xu, J. et al. Ultrathin 2D rare-earth nanomaterials: compositions, syntheses, and applications. Adv. Mater. 32, 1806461 (2020).
Hu, Y. et al. Synthesis of Pt-rare earth metal nanoalloys. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 953–961 (2020).
Santos, D. M. F. et al. Platinum–rare earth electrodes for hydrogen evolution in alkaline water electrolysis. Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 38, 3137–3145 (2013).
Hu, Y. et al. Mechanistic insights into the synthesis of platinum–rare earth metal nanoalloys by a solid-state chemical route. Chem. Mater. 33, 535–546 (2021).
Kanady, J. S. et al. Synthesis of Pt3Y and other early–late intermetallic nanoparticles by way of a molten reducing agent. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139, 5672–5675 (2017).
Jiang, Y. et al. Molten salt synthesis of carbon-supported Pt-rare earth metal nanoalloy catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction. RSC Adv. 12, 4805–4812 (2022).
Wang, X., Tang, Y., Lee, J.-M. & Fu, G. Recent advances in rare-earth-based materials for electrocatalysis. Chem. Catal. 2, 967–1008 (2022).
Peera, S. G., Lee, T. G. & Sahu, A. K. Pt-rare earth metal alloy/metal oxide catalysts for oxygen reduction and alcohol oxidation reactions: an overview. Sustain. Energ. Fuels 3, 1866–1891 (2019).
Nitopi, S. et al. Progress and perspectives of electrochemical CO2 reduction on copper in aqueous electrolyte. Chem. Rev. 119, 7610–7672 (2019).
Ma, W. et al. Electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 and CO to multi-carbon compounds over Cu-based catalysts. Chem. Soc. Rev. 50, 12897–12914 (2021).
Lin, Y. X. et al. Boosting selective nitrogen reduction to ammonia on electron-deficient copper nanoparticles. Nat. Commun. 10, 4380 (2019).
Zhang, R. et al. Electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia using copper-based electrocatalysts. Next Energy 4, 100125 (2024).
Li, Y. et al. Advancements in transition bimetal catalysts for electrochemical 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) oxidation. J. Energy Chem. 98, 24–46 (2024).
Zheng, T. et al. Copper-catalysed exclusive CO2 to pure formic acid conversion via single-atom alloying. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 1386–1393 (2021).
Li, J. et al. Selective CO2 electrolysis to CO using isolated antimony alloyed copper. Nat. Commun. 14, 340 (2023).
LaMer, V. K. & Dinegar, R. H. Theory, production and mechanism of formation of monodispersed hydrosols. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 72, 4847–4854 (1950).
Li, T. et al. Low-temperature molten salt synthesis for ligand-free transition metal oxide nanoparticles. ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 3, 3984–3990 (2020).
Jansons, A. W., Koskela, K. M., Crockett, B. M. & Hutchison, J. E. Transition metal-doped metal oxide nanocrystals: efficient substitutional doping through a continuous growth process. Chem. Mater. 29, 8167–8176 (2017).
Kerridge, D. H. & Shakir, W. M. Molten lithium nitrate-potassium nitrate eutectic: the reaction of tin(II) chloride. Thermochim. Acta 136, 149–152 (1988).
Hu, C. et al. Misoriented high-entropy iridium ruthenium oxide for acidic water splitting. Sci. Adv. 9, eadf9144 (2023).
Vreeland, E. C. et al. Enhanced nanoparticle size control by extending LaMer’s mechanism. Chem. Mater. 27, 6059–6066 (2015).
Hayashi, Y., Kimura, T. & Yamaguchi, T. Preparation of rod-shaped BaTiO3 powder. J. Mater. Sci. 21, 757–762 (1986).
Zhao, D. et al. On the viscosity of molten salts and molten salt mixtures and its temperature dependence. J. Energy Storage 61, 106707 (2023).
Dash, A., Vaßen, R., Guillon, O. & Gonzalez-Julian, J. Molten salt shielded synthesis of oxidation prone materials in air. Nat. Mater. 18, 465–470 (2019).
Dash, A. et al. Synthesis of Ti3SiC2 MAX phase powder by a molten salt shielded synthesis (MS3) method in air. J. Eur. Ceram. Soc. 39, 3651–3659 (2019).
Dai, Y. et al. The physical chemistry and materials science behind sinter-resistant catalysts. Chem. Soc. Rev. 47, 4314–4331 (2018).
Chen, J. et al. Diversity of platinum-sites at platinum/fullerene interface accelerates alkaline hydrogen evolution. Nat. Commun. 14, 1711 (2023).
Acknowledgements
C.X. acknowledges the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFB4105700), the Scientific Research Innovation Capability Support Project for Young Faculty (SRICSPYF-ZY2025052), the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2025NSFJQ0017) and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (ZYGX2025TS001). T.Z. acknowledges NSFC (22278067 and 22322201). X.L. acknowledges NSFC (22475030) and the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2024NSFSC1107). Q.J. acknowledges NSFC (22405035) and the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2024NSFSC1104). We appreciate the Analysis and Testing Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, for their technical support, especially Y. Hu and J. Li with regard to XRD and HAADF-STEM, respectively. We thank beamline BL11B (31124.02.SSRF.BL11B) of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility for providing the beamtime. We appreciate the discussion with C. Guo from SUPCON Technology for the theoretical computations in this work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
The project was conceptualized and supervised by C.X. H.W. conducted all the experiments with help from the other authors. H.W. carried out all the sample syntheses. H.W., H.Z. and Q.Z. performed the electrochemical tests. S.H. helped with the electron microscopy. H.W., J.L. and X.Z. performed the ex situ measurements. H.W. and Q.G. conducted the X-ray absorption fine structure measurements. C.L., X.L. and Y.Z. helped with the statistical analysis. C.L., X.Z., Q.Z. and J.L. provided useful discussion on this work. J.Z. helped with the design of the mechanism experiments. Y.J. designed the figures in the paper. H.W., C.L., T.Z., Q.J. and C.X. wrote and revised the paper.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Materials thanks Wolfgang Schmidt, Deli Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–69, Notes 1–13, Tables 1–4, additional methods and safety warning.
Supplementary Data 1
Atomic coordinates of the optimized computational models used in this work.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 1
EXAFS data of Dy1/CuO, Dy1/Cu2O, Dy1/Cu and references plotted in Fig. 1h.
Source Data Fig. 3
Dy1/Pt XRD data plotted in Fig. 3b, Dy1/Rh XRD data plotted in Fig. 3d, Dy1/Ir XRD data plotted in Fig. 3f, EXAFS data of Dy1/Pt, Dy1/Rh, Dy1/Ir and references plotted in Fig. 3g.
Source Data Fig. 4
EXAFS data of Dy1/Y2O3, Dy1/ZnO, Dy1/Pd, Dy1/AlOx, Dy1/RuO2, Dy1/SnO2, Dy1/C, Lu1/Mn3O4 and Lu1/FeOx and references plotted in Fig. 4b.
Source Data Fig. 5
LSV polarization data plotted in Fig. 5a, ECSA-normalized LSV polarization data plotted in Fig. 5b, Tafel slopes plotted in Fig. 5c, stability test data plotted in Fig. 5d and proton exchange membrane chronopotentiometry stability test data plotted in Fig. 5f.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, H., Liu, C., Ji, Y. et al. A molten-salt dispersion of lanthanides at the atomic scale. Nat. Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02492-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Version of record:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02492-y
