Programmable Synthesis of High-Entropy Nanoalloys for Efficient Ethanol Oxidation Reaction

Mengfan Li; Chenming Huang; Hao Yang; Yu Wang; Xiangcong Song; Tao Cheng; Jietao Jiang; Yangfan Lu; Maochang Liu; Quan Yuan; Zhizhen Ye; Zheng Hu; Hongwen Huang

doi:10.1021/acsnano.3c02762

Programmable Synthesis of High-Entropy Nanoalloys for Efficient Ethanol Oxidation Reaction

ACS Nano. 2023 Jul 25;17(14):13659-13671. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.3c02762. Epub 2023 Jul 7.

Authors

Mengfan Li¹, Chenming Huang¹, Hao Yang², Yu Wang¹, Xiangcong Song², Tao Cheng², Jietao Jiang³, Yangfan Lu⁴, Maochang Liu⁵, Quan Yuan⁶, Zhizhen Ye⁴, Zheng Hu³, Hongwen Huang^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan 410082, People's Republic of China.
² Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Soochow University, Jiangsu 215123, People's Republic of China.
³ Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry of MOE and Jiangsu Provincial Lab for Nanotechnology, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210023, People's Republic of China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, People's Republic of China.
⁵ International Research Center for Renewable Energy, National Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, People's Republic of China.
⁶ Molecular Science and Biomedicine Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, People's Republic of China.
⁷ Shenzhen Research Institute of Hunan University, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 37418375
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c02762

Abstract

Controllable synthesis of nanoscale high-entropy alloys (HEAs) with specific morphologies and tunable compositions is crucial for exploring advanced catalysts. The present strategies either have great difficulties to tailor the morphology of nanoscale HEAs or suffer from narrow elemental distributions and insufficient generality. To overcome the limitations of these strategies, here we report a robust template-directed synthesis to programmatically fabricate nanoscale HEAs with controllable compositions and structures via independently controlling the morphology and composition of HEA. As a proof of concept, 12 kinds of nanoscale HEAs with controllable morphologies of zero-dimension (0D) nanoparticles, 1D nanowires, 2D ultrathin nanorings (UNRs), 3D nanodendrites, and vast elemental compositions combining five or more of Pd/Pt/Ag/Cu/Fe/Co/Ni/Pb/Bi/Sn/Sb/Ge are synthesized. Moreover, the as-prepared HEA-PdPtCuPbBiUNRs/C demonstrates the state-of-the-art electrocatalytic performance for the ethanol oxidation reaction, with 25.6- and 16.3-fold improvements in mass activity, relative to commercial Pd/C and Pt/C catalysts, respectively, as well as greatly enhanced durability. This work provides a myriad of nanoscale HEAs and a general synthetic strategy, which are expected to have broad impacts for the fields of catalysis, sensing, biomedicine, and even beyond.

Keywords: controllable compositions and structures; electrocatalysis; ethanol oxidation reaction; high-entropy nanoalloys; programmable synthesis; template-directed synthesis.