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Antimony oxides-protected ultrathin Ir-Sb nanowires as bifunctional hydrogen electrocatalysts

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Abstract

Developing electrocatalysts with fast kinetics and long-term stability for alkaline hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is of considerable importance for the industrial production of green and sustainable energy. Here, an ultrathin Ir-Sb nanowires (Ir-Sb NWs) protected by antimony oxides (SbOx) was synthesized as an efficient bifunctional catalyst for both HOR and HER under alkaline media. Except from the much higher mass activities of Ir-Sb nanowires than those of Ir nanowires (Ir NWs) and commercial Pt/C, the SbOx protective layer also contributes to the maintenance of morphology and anti-CO poisoning ability, leading to the long-term cycling performance in the presence of CO. Specifically, the Ir-Sb NW/SbOx exhibits the highest catalytic activities, which are about 3.5 and 4.8 times to those of Ir NW/C and commercial Pt/C toward HOR, respectively. This work provides that the ultrathin morphology and H2O-occupied Sb sites can exert the intrinsic high activity of Ir and effectively optimize the absorption of OH⋆ both in alkaline HER/HOR electrolysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the financial supports by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2020YFB1505802), Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2017YFA0208200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22025108, U21A20327, 22121001 and 22275152), and start-up support from Xiamen University. We thank beamline TLS01C1 (“National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center”) for providing the beam time. We acknowledge support from the Max Planck-POSTECH-Hsinchu Center for Complex Phase Materials.

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  1. Bingyan Xu and Xuan Huang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Country State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Bingyan Xu, Xuan Huang, Shangheng Liu & Xiaoqing Huang

  2. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, 01187, Germany

    Zhiwei Hu

  3. “National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center”, Hsinchu, 30076, Taiwan, China

    Cheng-Wei Kao & Ting-Shan Chan

  4. School of Materials Engineering, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu, 215500, China

    Hongbo Geng

  5. Institute for Carbon Neutralization, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, 325035, China

    Ying Zhang

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  1. Bingyan Xu
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Xu, B., Huang, X., Liu, S. et al. Antimony oxides-protected ultrathin Ir-Sb nanowires as bifunctional hydrogen electrocatalysts. Nano Res. 17, 1042–1049 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5996-0

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