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Revealing the Contribution of Individual Factors to Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Catalytic Activity
Author(s) -
Zhou Yu,
Silva Jose Luis,
Woods John M.,
Pondick Joshua V.,
Feng Qingliang,
Liang Zhixiu,
Liu Wen,
Lin Li,
Deng Bingchen,
Brena Barbara,
Xia Fengnian,
Peng Hailin,
Liu Zhongfan,
Wang Hailiang,
Araujo Carlos Moyses,
Cha Judy J.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.201706076
Subject(s) - catalysis , microreactor , materials science , electrochemistry , rational design , hydrogen , nanotechnology , chemical physics , chemical engineering , electrode , chemistry , organic chemistry , engineering
For the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the electrical properties of catalysts can play an important role in influencing the overall catalytic activity. This is particularly important for semiconducting HER catalysts such as MoS 2 , which has been extensively studied over the last decade. Herein, on‐chip microreactors on two model catalysts, semiconducting MoS 2 and semimetallic WTe 2 , are employed to extract the effects of individual factors and study their relations with the HER catalytic activity. It is shown that electron injection at the catalyst/current collector interface and intralayer and interlayer charge transport within the catalyst can be more important than thermodynamic energy considerations. For WTe 2 , the site‐dependent activities and the relations of the pure thermodynamics to the overall activity are measured and established, as the microreactors allow precise measurements of the type and area of the catalytic sites. The approach presents opportunities to study electrochemical reactions systematically to help establish rational design principles for future electrocatalysts.