Short-Range Ordered Iridium Single Atoms Integrated into Cobalt Oxide Spinel Structure for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Water Oxidation

作者：Jieqiong Shan, Chao Ye, Shuangming Chen, Tulai Sun, Yan Jiao, Lingmei Liu, Chongzhi Zhu, Li Song, Yu Han, Mietek Jaroniec, Yihan Zhu, Yao Zheng, Shi‐Zhang Qiao · 发表于：Journal of the American Chemical Society · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1021/jacs.1c01525 · 被引用次数：563 · 研究领域：Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion、Copper-based nanomaterials and applications、Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques

Noble metals manifest themselves with unique electronic structures and irreplaceable activity toward a wide range of catalytic applications but are unfortunately restricted by limited choice of geometric structures spanning single atoms, clusters, nanoparticles, and bulk crystals. Herein, we propose how to overcome this limitation by integrating noble metal atoms into the lattice of transition metal oxides to create a new type of hybrid structure. This study shows that iridium single atoms can be accommodated into the cationic sites of cobalt spinel oxide with short-range order and an identical spatial correlation as the host lattice. The resultant Ir 0.06 Co 2.94 O 4 catalyst exhibits much higher electrocatalytic activity than the parent oxide by 2 orders of magnitude toward the challenging oxygen evolution reaction under acidic conditions. Because of the strong interaction between iridium and cobalt oxide support, the Ir 0.06 Co 2.94 O 4 catalyst shows significantly improved corrosion resistance under acidic conditions and oxidative potentials. This work eliminates the “close-packing” limitation of noble metals and offers promising opportunity to create analogues with desired topologies for various catalytic applications.