Speaker
Description
Electrocatalysis is the key to our future transition to a renewable energy system. Yet, our fundamental understanding of electrocatalysis lags behind classical heterogeneous catalysis, which has dominated chemical technology for a long time.
Here, we describe a new strategy to advance fundamental studies on electrocatalytic materials. We propose to “electrify” complex model catalysts made by surface science methods to explore electrocatalytic reactions in liquid environments. We demonstrate the feasibility of this concept by transferring an atomically-defined platinum/cobalt oxide model catalyst into the electrochemical environment while preserving its atomic surface structure. Combining vibrational spectroscopy, ambient photoelectron spectroscopy, and other surface science and electrochemical methods, we explore particle size effects and identify hitherto unknown metal-support interactions that stabilize oxidized platinum at the metal-support interface. The latter effect opens a new synergistic reaction pathway that involves both metallic and oxidized platinum. Our results illustrate the potential of the concept, which makes available a systematic approach to build atomically-defined model electrodes for fundamental electrocatalytic studies.
