The recent advances in electrocatalysis for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are thoroughly reviewed. This comprehensive Review focuses on the low- and non-platinum electrocatalysts including advanced platinum alloys, core–shell structures, palladium-based catalysts, metal oxides and chalcogenides, carbon-based non-noble metal catalysts, and metal-free catalysts. The recent development of ORR electrocatalysts with novel structures and compositions is highlighted. The understandings of the correlation between the activity and the shape, size, composition, and synthesis method are summarized. For the carbon-based materials, their performance and stability in fuel cells and comparisons with those of platinum are documented. The research directions as well as perspectives on the further development of more active and less expensive electrocatalysts are provided.

http://repository.ust.hk/ir/bitstream/1783.1-77094/1/acs.chemrev.5b00462_withlink.pdf

Recent Advances in Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Gold nanoparticles have been used in biomedical applications since their first colloidal syntheses more than three centuries ago. However, over the past two decades, their beautiful colors and unique electronic properties have also attracted tremendous attention due to their historical applications in art and ancient medicine and current applications in enhanced optoelectronics and photovoltaics. In spite of their modest alchemical beginnings, gold nanoparticles exhibit physical properties that are truly different from both small molecules and bulk materials, as well as from other nanoscale particles. Their unique combination of properties is just beginning to be fully realized in range of medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. This critical review will provide insights into the design, synthesis, functionalization, and applications of these artificial molecules in biomedicine and discuss their tailored interactions with biological systems to achieve improved patient health. Further, we provide a survey of the rapidly expanding body of literature on this topic and argue that gold nanotechnology-enabled biomedicine is not simply an act of ‘gilding the (nanomedicinal) lily’, but that a new ‘Golden Age’ of biomedical nanotechnology is truly upon us. Moving forward, the most challenging nanoscience ahead of us will be to find new chemical and physical methods of functionalizing gold nanoparticles with compounds that can promote efficient binding, clearance, and biocompatibility and to assess their safety to other biological systems and their long-term term effects on human health and reproduction (472 references).

The golden age: gold nanoparticles for biomedicine

Metal species with different size (single atoms, nanoclusters, and nanoparticles) show different catalytic behavior for various heterogeneous catalytic reactions. It has been shown in the literature that many factors including the particle size, shape, chemical composition, metal–support interaction, and metal–reactant/solvent interaction can have significant influences on the catalytic properties of metal catalysts. The recent developments of well-controlled synthesis methodologies and advanced characterization tools allow one to correlate the relationships at the molecular level. In this Review, the electronic and geometric structures of single atoms, nanoclusters, and nanoparticles will be discussed. Furthermore, we will summarize the catalytic applications of single atoms, nanoclusters, and nanoparticles for different types of reactions, including CO oxidation, selective oxidation, selective hydrogenation, organic reactions, electrocatalytic, and photocatalytic reactions. We will compare the results o...

Metal Catalysts for Heterogeneous Catalysis: From Single Atoms to Nanoclusters and Nanoparticles.

Single-atom catalysis has arguably become the most active new frontier in heterogeneous catalysis. Aided by recent advances in practical synthetic methodologies, characterization techniques and computational modelling, we now have a large number of single-atom catalysts (SACs) that exhibit distinctive performances for a wide variety of chemical reactions. This Perspective summarizes recent experimental and computational efforts aimed at understanding the bonding in SACs and how this relates to catalytic performance. The examples described here illustrate the utility of SACs in a broad scope of industrially important reactions and highlight the advantages these catalysts have over those presently used. SACs have well-defined active centres, such that unique opportunities exist for the rational design of new catalysts with high activities, selectivities and stabilities. Indeed, given a certain practical application, we can often design a suitable SAC; thus, the field has developed very rapidly and afforded promising catalyst leads. Moreover, the control we have over certain SAC structures paves the way for designing base metal catalysts with the activities of noble metal catalysts. It appears that we are entering a new era of heterogeneous catalysis in which we have control over well-dispersed single-atom active sites whose properties we can readily tune. Single-atom catalysts are heterogeneous materials featuring active metals sites atomically dispersed on a surface. This Review describes methods by which we prepare and characterize these materials, as well as how we can tune their catalytic performance in a variety of important reactions.

Heterogeneous single-atom catalysis

Because of the remarkably high theoretical energy output, metal–air batteries represent one class of promising power sources for applications in next-generation electronics, electrified transportation and energy storage of smart grids. The most prominent feature of a metal–air battery is the combination of a metal anode with high energy density and an air electrode with open structure to draw cathode active materials (i.e., oxygen) from air. In this critical review, we present the fundamentals and recent advances related to the fields of metal–air batteries, with a focus on the electrochemistry and materials chemistry of air electrodes. The battery electrochemistry and catalytic mechanism of oxygen reduction reactions are discussed on the basis of aqueous and organic electrolytes. Four groups of extensively studied catalysts for the cathode oxygen reduction/evolution are selectively surveyed from materials chemistry to electrode properties and battery application: Pt and Pt-based alloys (e.g., PtAu nanoparticles), carbonaceous materials (e.g., graphene nanosheets), transition-metal oxides (e.g., Mn-based spinels and perovskites), and inorganic–organic composites (e.g., metal macrocycle derivatives). The design and optimization of air-electrode structure are also outlined. Furthermore, remarks on the challenges and perspectives of research directions are proposed for further development of metal–air batteries (219 references).

Metal–air batteries: from oxygen reduction electrochemistry to cathode catalysts

A computational method for partitioning a charge density grid into Bader volumes is presented which is efficient, robust, and scales linearly with the number of grid points. The partitioning algorithm follows the steepest ascent paths along the charge density gradient from grid point to grid point until a charge density maximum is reached. In this paper, we describe how accurate off-lattice ascent paths can be represented with respect to the grid points. This improvement maintains the efficient linear scaling of an earlier version of the algorithm, and eliminates a tendency for the Bader surfaces to be aligned along the grid directions. As the algorithm assigns grid points to charge density maxima, subsequent paths are terminated when they reach previously assigned grid points. It is this grid-based approach which gives the algorithm its efficiency, and allows for the analysis of the large grids generated from plane-wave-based density functional theory calculations.

/pdf/a-grid-based-bader-analysis-algorithm-without-lattice-bias-4zdxoor5iz.pdf

A grid-based Bader analysis algorithm without lattice bias

The prevailing view of CO oxidation on gold-titanium oxide (Au/TiO 2 ) catalysts is that the reaction occurs on metal sites at the Au/TiO 2 interface. We observed dual catalytic sites at the perimeter of 3-nanometer Au particles supported on TiO 2 during CO oxidation. Infrared-kinetic measurements indicate that O-O bond scission is activated by the formation of a CO-O 2 complex at dual Ti-Au sites at the Au/TiO 2 interface. Density functional theory calculations, which provide the activation barriers for the formation and bond scission of the CO-O 2 complex, confirm this model as well as the measured apparent activation energy of 0.16 electron volt. The observation of sequential delivery and reaction of CO first from TiO 2 sites and then from Au sites indicates that catalytic activity occurs at the perimeter of Au nanoparticles.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/333/6043/736.full.pdf

Spectroscopic Observation of Dual Catalytic Sites During Oxidation of CO on a Au/TiO2 Catalyst

We demonstrate that the reduction of p-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol by NaBH4 is catalyzed by both monometallic and bimetallic nanoparticles (NPs). We also demonstrate a straightforward and precise method for the synthesis of bimetallic nanoparticles using poly(amido)amine dendrimers. The resulting dendrimer encapsulated nanoparticles (DENs) are monodisperse, and the size distribution does not vary with different elemental combinations. Random alloys of Pt/Cu, Pd/Cu, Pd/Au, Pt/Au, and Au/Cu DENs were synthesized and evaluated as catalysts for p-nitrophenol reduction. These combinations are chosen in order to selectively tune the binding energy of the p-nitrophenol adsorbate to the nanoparticle surface. Following the Bronsted-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) relation, we show that the binding energy can reasonably predict the reaction rates of p-nitrophenol reduction. We demonstrate that the measured reaction rate constants of the bimetallic DENs is not always a simple average of the properties of the constituent metals. In particular, DENs containing metals with similar lattice constants produce a binding energy close to the average of the two constituents, whereas DENs containing metals with a lattice mismatch show a bimodal distribution of binding energies. Overall, in this work we present a uniform method for synthesizing pure and bimetallic DENs and demonstrate that their catalytic properties are dependent on the adsorbate's binding energy.

/pdf/a-systematic-investigation-of-p-nitrophenol-reduction-by-zgrotfp35m.pdf

A Systematic Investigation of p -Nitrophenol Reduction by Bimetallic Dendrimer Encapsulated Nanoparticles.

Bimetallic core-shell nanoparticles are a class of near-surface alloy catalyst for which there is a high degree of control over size and composition. A challenge for theory is to understand the relationship between their structure and catalytic function and provide guidelines to design new catalysts that take advantage of material properties arising at the nanoscale. In this work, we use density functional theory to calculate the energetics of oxygen dissociative adsorption on 1 nm Pd-shell nanoparticles with a series of core metals. The barrier for this reaction and the binding energy of atomic oxygen is found to correlate well with the d-band level of the surface electrons. Noble metal cores lower the barrier and increase the binding, reducing the activity of the Pd-shell as compared to Pt. Reactive core metals such as Co and Mo, on the other hand, lower the d-band of the shell with respect to the Fermi level, giving the Pd-shelled particles oxygen reduction kinetics similar to that of Pt. While both ligand and strain effects determine the d-band center of the Pd shell, a greater surface relaxation reduces the strain in nanoparticles as compared to single-crystal near-surface alloys. Charge redistribution between core and shell then becomes an important factor for lowering the d-band center of Pd-shelled particles and increasing their activity for the oxygen reduction reaction.

/pdf/charge-redistribution-in-core-shell-nanoparticles-to-promote-3r6hifxfr3.pdf

Charge redistribution in core-shell nanoparticles to promote oxygen reduction.

Gold (Au) nanoparticles supported on reducible oxides such as TiO2 demonstrate exceptional catalytic activity for a wide range of gas phase oxidation reactions such as CO oxidation, olefin epoxidation, and water gas shift catalysis. Scientists have recently shifted their hypotheses on the origin of the reactivity of these materials from the unique electronic properties and under-coordinated Au sites on nanometer-sized particles to bifunctional sites at the Au-support interface. In this Account, we summarize our recent experimental and theoretical results to provide insights into the active sites and pathways that control oxidation over Au/TiO2 catalysts. We provide transmission IR spectroscopic data that show the direct involvement of the Au-Ti(4+) dual perimeter sites, and density functional theory results that connect the electronic properties at these sites to their reactivity and to plausible reaction mechanisms. We also show the importance of interfacial Au-Ti(4+) sites in adsorbing and activating O2 as a result of charge transfer from the Au into antibonding states on O2 causing di-σ interactions with interfacial Au-Ti(4+) sites. This results in apparent activation energies for O2 activation of 0.16-0.60 eV thus allowing these materials to operate over a wide range of temperatures (110-420 K) and offering the ability also to control H-H, C-H, and C-O bond scission. At low temperatures (100-130 K), adsorbed O2 directly reacts with co-adsorbed CO or H2. In addition, we observe the specific consumption of CO adsorbed on TiO2. The more strongly held CO/Au species do not react at ∼120 K due to high diffusion barriers that prevent them from reaching active interfacial sites. At higher temperatures, O2 directly dissociates to form active oxygen adatoms (O*) on Au and TiO2. These readily react with bound hydrocarbon intermediates via base-catalyzed nucleophilic attack on unsaturated C═O and C═C bonds or via activation of weakly acidic C-H or O-H bonds. We demonstrate that when the active Au-Ti(4+) sites are pre-occupied by O*, the low temperature CO oxidation rate is reduced by a factor 22. We observe similar site blocking for H2 oxidation by O2, where the reaction at 210 K is quenched by ice formation. At higher temperatures (400-420 K), the O* generated at the perimeter sites is able to diffuse onto the Au particles, which then activate weakly acidic C-H bonds and assist in C-O bond scission. These sites allow for active conversion of adsorbed acetate intermediates on TiO2 (CH3COO/TiO2) to a gold ketenylidene species (Au2═C═C═O). The consecutive C-H bond scission steps appear to proceed by the reaction with basic O* or OH* on the Au sites and C-O bond activation occurs at the Au-Ti(4+) dual perimeter sites. There is a bound-intermediate transfer from the TiO2 support to the Au sites during the course of reaction as the reactant (CH3COO/TiO2) and the product (Au2═C═C═O) are bound to different sites. We demonstrate that IR spectroscopy is a powerful tool to follow surface catalytic reactions and provide kinetic information, while theory provides atomic scale insights into the mechanisms and the active sites that control catalytic oxidation.

Wenjie Tang

Papers

A grid-based Bader analysis algorithm without lattice bias

Spectroscopic Observation of Dual Catalytic Sites During Oxidation of CO on a Au/TiO2 Catalyst

A Systematic Investigation of p -Nitrophenol Reduction by Bimetallic Dendrimer Encapsulated Nanoparticles.

Charge redistribution in core-shell nanoparticles to promote oxygen reduction.

Insights into Catalytic Oxidation at the Au/TiO2 Dual Perimeter Sites