Kinetic cation effect in alkaline hydrogen electrocatalysis and double layer proton transfer

Unveiling the so far ambiguous mechanism of the significant dependence on the identity of alkali metal cation would prompt opportunities to solve the more than two orders of magnitude slowdown of hydrogen electrocatalytic kinetics in base relative to acid, which has hampered the effort to reduce the precious metal usage in fuel cells by using the hydroxide exchange membrane. Herein, we present atomic-scale evidences from ab-initio molecular dynamics simulation and in-situ surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy which show that it is the apparent discrepancies in the electric double-layer structures induced by differently sized cations that lead to largely different interfacial proton transfer…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 21832004, 22332004, 22202156, 22272122, 22472122
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province

  Award: 2024AFB571
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China