Experimental Proof of the Bifunctional Mechanism for the Hydrogen Oxidation in Alkaline Media.

Realization of the hydrogen economy relies on effective hydrogen production, storage, and utilization. The slow kinetics of hydrogen evolution and oxidation reaction (HER/HOR) in alkaline media limits many practical applications involving hydrogen generation and utilization, and how to overcome this fundamental limitation remains debatable. Here we present a kinetic study of the HOR on representative catalytic systems in alkaline media.

Composite Ni/NiO-CrO Catalyst for Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.

We report a Ni-Cr/C electrocatalyst with unprecedented mass-activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline electrolyte. The HER kinetics of numerous binary and ternary Ni-alloys and composite Ni/metal-oxide/C samples were evaluated in aqueous 0.1 M KOH electrolyte.

Activity descriptor identification for oxygen reduction on platinum-based bimetallic nanoparticles: in situ observation of the linear composition-strain-activity relationship.

Despite recent progress in developing active and durable oxygen reduction catalysts with reduced Pt content, lack of elegant bottom-up synthesis procedures with knowledge over the control of atomic arrangement and morphology of the Pt-alloy catalysts still hinders fuel cell commercialization. To follow a less empirical synthesis path for improved Pt-based catalysts, it is essential to correlate catalytic performance to properties that can be easily controlled and measured experimentally. Herein, using Pt-Co alloy nanoparticles (NPs) with varying atomic composition as an example, we show that the atomic distribution of Pt-based bimetallic NPs under operating conditions is strongly dependent on the initial atomic ratio by employing microscopic and in situ spectroscopic techniques.