Stable Multimetallic Nanoparticles for Oxygen Electrocatalysis

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b01523
• Publication Date: 2019-07-17T11:44:36Z
• Authors: Steven D. Lacey; Qi Dong; Zhennan Huang; Jingru Luo; Hua Xie; Zhiwei Lin; Dylan J. Kirsch; Vivek Vattipalli; Christopher Povin...; Wei Fan; Reza Shahbazian-Y...; Dunwei Wang; Liangbing Hu
• Keywords: Chemical Stability

Nanostructured catalysts often face an important challenge: poor stability. Many factors contribute to catalytic degradation, including parasitic chemical reactions, phase separation, agglomeration, and dissolution, leading activity loss especially during long-term reactions. This challenge is shared by a new family of catalysts, multimetallic nanoparticles, which have emerged owing their broad tunability high activity. While significant synthesis-based advances been made, the stability these nanostructured has not well addressed. In this study, we reveal critical influence synthetic method on through aprotic oxygen catalysis (Li-O2 battery) demonstrations. comparison conventional wet impregnation (WI) method, show that carbothermal shock (CTS) dramatically improves overall structural catalyst with same elemental compositions. For compositions (4- 8-elements), electrocatalysts as battery lifetime can be further improved incorporating additional noncatalytically active elements into individual nanoparticles via CTS. The results offer path toward stabilization where reaction schemes beyond electrocatalysis are foreseeable.