Inside Back Cover: Atomically Local Electric Field Induced Interface Water Reorientation for Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 26/2023)

Abstract

Alkaline water electrolysis is a promising technology for hydrogen production, but the slow water dissociation process limits the kinetics of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In their Research Article (e202300873), Emiliano Cortés et al. designed an atomically asymmetric local electric field using Ir-Ru dizygotic single-atom sites (IrRu DSACs) to optimize the dissociation process by tuning the H2O adsorption configuration and orientation. As a result, IrRu DSACs exhibited an ultralow overpotential of 10 mV at 10 mA/cm2 current density in a single cell and a high stability over 300 h at 1 A/cm2 in a membrane electrode assembly.