Discovery of Highly Active Noble‐Metal‐Lean Mo−Ru Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The discovery of high‐performance electrocatalysts for water electrolysis is highly important. We use a strategy for catalyst discovery based on high‐throughput screening of a broad range of materials compositions on a thin‐film materials library to identify noble‐metal‐lean multi‐metal compositions with high activity towards the hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline electrolyte. We demonstrate this strategy using a quaternary materials library containing Mo, Ag, Ti, and Ru fabricated by combinatorial magnetron sputtering on a 10 cm diameter wafer providing 342 measurement areas. Surprisingly, binary Mo−Ru‐containing catalyst compositions with comparatively low Ru content exhibited the highest activity. Using the polymer/metal precursor‐based spray technique, Ni foam electrodes were modified with the Mo−Ru hit compositions and evaluated in a model electrolyzer in membrane electrode assembly (MEA) configuration. The electrodes showed a very low overpotential of only 132 mV at a comparatively high current density of −2 A cm−2 and a 24 h electrolysis stability at −1 A cm−2 with no observable degradation after the initial electrode conditioning.

This publication has 41 references indexed in Scilit: