Engineering Platinum–Oxygen Dual Catalytic Sites via Charge Transfer towards Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution
Fei Lu, Yi Ding, Shoujie Liu, Fei Zhan, Bo Zhou, Lin Gu, Dmitri Golberg, Xi Wang, Jiannian Yao
Abstract
Abstract A dual‐site catalyst allows for a synergetic reaction in the close proximity to enhance catalysis. It is highly desirable to create dual‐site interfaces in single‐atom system to maximize the effect. Herein, we report a cation‐deficient electrostatic anchorage route to fabricate an atomically dispersed platinum–titania catalyst (Pt 1 O1 /Ti 1− x O 2 ), which shows greatly enhanced hydrogen evolution activity, surpassing that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst in mass by a factor of 53.2. Operando techniques and density functional calculations reveal that Pt 1 O1 /Ti 1− x O 2 experiences a Pt−O dual‐site catalytic pathway, where the inherent charge transfer within the dual sites encourages the jointly coupling protons and plays the key role during the Volmer–Tafel process. There is almost no decay in the activity of Pt 1 O1 /Ti 1− x O 2 over 300 000 cycles, meaning 30 times of enhancement in stability compared to the commercial Pt/C catalysts (10 000 cycles).