Atomic layer deposited Pt-Ru dual-metal dimers and identifying their active sites for hydrogen evolution reaction

Lei Zhang; Rutong Si; Hanshuo Liu; Ning Chen; Qi Wang; Keegan Adair; Zhiqiang Wang; Jiatang Chen; Zhongxin Song; Junjie Li; Mohammad Norouzi Banis; Ruying Li; Tsun-Kong Sham; Meng Gu; Li-Min Liu; Gianluigi A Botton; Xueliang Sun

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12887-y

Atomic layer deposited Pt-Ru dual-metal dimers and identifying their active sites for hydrogen evolution reaction

Nat Commun. 2019 Oct 30;10(1):4936. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12887-y.

Authors

Lei Zhang¹, Rutong Si^{2

3}, Hanshuo Liu⁴, Ning Chen⁵, Qi Wang⁶, Keegan Adair¹, Zhiqiang Wang⁷, Jiatang Chen⁷, Zhongxin Song¹, Junjie Li¹, Mohammad Norouzi Banis¹, Ruying Li¹, Tsun-Kong Sham⁷, Meng Gu⁶, Li-Min Liu⁸, Gianluigi A Botton⁹, Xueliang Sun¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 5B9, Canada.
² Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing, 100193, China.
³ School of Physics, Beihang University, Beijing, 100083, China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L8, Canada.
⁵ Canadian Light Source Inc, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 2V3, Canada.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 5B7, Canada.
⁸ School of Physics, Beihang University, Beijing, 100083, China. liminliu@buaa.edu.cn.
⁹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L8, Canada. gbotton@mcmaster.ca.
¹⁰ Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 5B9, Canada. xsun@eng.uwo.ca.

Abstract

Single atom catalysts exhibit particularly high catalytic activities in contrast to regular nanomaterial-based catalysts. Until recently, research has been mostly focused on single atom catalysts, and it remains a great challenge to synthesize bimetallic dimer structures. Herein, we successfully prepare high-quality one-to-one A-B bimetallic dimer structures (Pt-Ru dimers) through an atomic layer deposition (ALD) process. The Pt-Ru dimers show much higher hydrogen evolution activity (more than 50 times) and excellent stability compared to commercial Pt/C catalysts. X-ray absorption spectroscopy indicates that the Pt-Ru dimers structure model contains one Pt-Ru bonding configuration. First principle calculations reveal that the Pt-Ru dimer generates a synergy effect by modulating the electronic structure, which results in the enhanced hydrogen evolution activity. This work paves the way for the rational design of bimetallic dimers with good activity and stability, which have a great potential to be applied in various catalytic reactions.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't