Revealing Active Sites for Hydrogen Evolution at Pt and Pd Atomic Layers on Au Surfaces

Yunchang Liang, Christoph Csoklich, David McLaughlin, Oliver Schneider, Aliaksandr S. Bandarenka

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Identification of the most active surface sites is one of the key tasks in the development of new electrocatalytic materials. This is in many cases both time and resource consuming due to methodological difficulties of in situ detection of centers of this kind. In this work, we use the recently developed approach based on the analysis of the tunneling current noise recorded by electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy (n-ECSTM) to compare the nature of the most active hydrogen evolution catalytic sites in a system consisting of sub-monolayers of platinum on a Au substrate to the one of palladium on Au. Our n-ECSTM measurements performed under reaction conditions show that in striking contrast to Pd islands on gold, where the most active centers are located close to the boundary between Au and palladium atoms, all Pt ad-atoms contribute to the overall activity rather equally at pH 1. Methodological aspects related to the use of n-ECSTM in electrocatalytic research are also discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)12476-12480
Number of pages5
JournalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume11
Issue number13
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Apr 2019

Keywords

  • active catalytic sites
  • electrocatalysis
  • electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy
  • hydrogen evolution reaction
  • palladium
  • platinum

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