Hydrogen Spillover Mechanism at the Metal-Metal Interface in Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation.

Abstract

Hydrogen spillover in metal-supported catalysts can largely enhance electrocatalytic hydrogenation performance and reduce energy consumption. However, its fundamental mechanism, especially at the metal-metal interface, remains further explored, impeding relevant catalyst design. Here, we theoretically profile that a large free energy difference in hydrogen adsorption on two different metals (|ΔGH-metal(i)-ΔGH-metal(ii)|) induces a high kinetic barrier to hydrogen spillover between the metals. Minimizing the difference in their d-band centers (Δϵd) should reduce |ΔGH-metal(i)-ΔGH-metal(ii)|, lowering the kinetic barrier to hydrogen spillover for improved electrocatalytic hydrogenation. We demonstrated this concept using copper-supported ruthenium-platinum alloys with the smallest Δϵd, which delivered record high electrocatalytic nitrate hydrogenation performance, with ammonia production rate of 3.45±0.12 mmol h-1 cm-2 and Faraday efficiency of 99.8±0.2 %, at low energy consumption of 21.4 kWh kgamm -1. Using these catalysts, we further achieve continuous ammonia and formic acid production with a record high-profit space.