Abstract
Highly active metal nanoparticles are desired to serve in high-temperature electrocatalysis, for example, in solid oxide electrochemical cells. Unfortunately, the low thermal stability of nanosized particles and the sophisticated interface requirement for electrode structures to support concurrent ionic and electronic transport make it hard to identify the exact catalytic role of nanoparticles embedded within complex electrode architectures. Here we present an accurate analysis of the reactivity of oxide electrodes boosted by metal nanoparticles, where all particles participate in the reaction. Monodisperse particles (Pt, Pd, Au and Co), 10 nm in size and stable at high temperature (more than 600 °C), are uniformly distributed onto mixed-conducting oxide electrodes as a model electrochemical cell via self-assembled nanopatterning. We identify how the metal catalysts activate hydrogen electrooxidation on the ceria-based electrode surface and quantify how rapidly the reaction rate increases with proper choice of metal. These results suggest an ideal electrode design for high-temperature electrochemical applications.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
Y.C., S.L. and W.J. were supported financially by the Nano·Material Technology Development Program (NRF-2017M3A7B4049507), the Global Frontier R&D Program (2011-0031569) and the Basic Research Program (2014R1A4A1003712) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning. S.K.C. and S.O.K. were supported financially by the National Creative Research Initiative (CRI) Center for Multi-Dimensional Directed Nanoscale Assembly (2015R1A3A2033061) funded by NRF. H.H. and H.Y.K. acknowledge financial support from National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grants funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (2017R1A2B4009829 and 2017R1A4A1015360). H.K.S. and J.Y.L. were supported financially by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS-R004-D1). This research used resources of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a US DOE Office of Science Facility, and the Scientific Data and Computing Center, a part of the Computational Science Initiative at Brookhaven National Laboratory (contract no. DE-SC0012704).
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Y.C., S.L. and W.J. conceived the idea for this study. Y.C. prepared the electrode cells and collected the electrocatalytic data. S.K.C. synthesized metal nanoparticles using BCP. H.H. performed DFT calculations. S.L. performed the CO oxidation test. H.K.S. and J.Y.L. performed TEM characterization. W.J., S.O.K. and H.Y.K. supervised the project and wrote the manuscript. All authors commented on the data and the manuscript.
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Choi, Y., Cha, S.K., Ha, H. et al. Unravelling inherent electrocatalysis of mixed-conducting oxide activated by metal nanoparticle for fuel cell electrodes. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 245–251 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0367-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0367-4
