Highly Active WC-Based Composites for the HER in Alkaline Solution: the Role of Surface Oxide Species.

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a crucial electrochemical process for the proposed hydrogen economy since it has the potential to provide pure hydrogen for fuel cells. Nowadays, hydrogen electroproduction is considerably expensive, so promoting the development of new non-noble catalysts for the cathode of alkaline electrolyzers appears as a suitable way to reduce the costs of this technology. In this sense, a series of tungsten-based carbide materials have been synthesized by the urea-glass route as candidates to improve the HER in alkaline media.

Titanium Oxycarbide as Platinum-Free Electrocatalyst for Ethanol Oxidation.

The compound material titanium oxycarbide (TiOC) is found to be an effective electrocatalyst for the electrochemical oxidation of ethanol to CO. The complete course of this reaction is one of the main challenges in direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFCs). While TiOC has previously been investigated as catalyst support material only, in this study we show that TiOC alone is able to oxidize ethanol to acetaldehyde without the need of expensive noble metal catalysts like Pt.

A laboratory-based multifunctional near ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy system for electrochemical, catalytic, and cryogenic studies.

A versatile multifunctional laboratory-based near ambient pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) instrument is presented. The entire device is highly customized regarding geometry, exchangeable manipulators and sample stages for liquid- and solid-state electrochemistry, cryochemistry, and heterogeneous catalysis. It therefore delivers novel and unique access to a variety of experimental approaches toward a broad choice of functional materials and their specific surface processes.

Electroreduction of CO in a Non-aqueous Electrolyte-The Generic Role of Acetonitrile.

Transition metal carbides, especially MoC, are praised to be efficient electrocatalysts to reduce CO to valuable hydrocarbons. However, on MoC in an aqueous electrolyte, exclusively the competing hydrogen evolution reaction takes place, and this discrepancy to theory was traced back to the formation of a thin oxide layer at the electrode surface. Here, we study the CO reduction activity at MoC in a non-aqueous electrolyte to avoid such passivation and to determine products and the CO reduction reaction pathway.