The active sites confined by intrinsic atom-chains at engineering XRuEr (X=Fe, Co, Ni) surfaces facilitate oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a critical role in developing new-type energy conversion devices, which is facing the difficulty of its sluggish reaction kinetics. The electronic structures of catalyst surfaces can be regulated by their surface topography, and the spatial distribution of active sites also can affect their bonding interaction and orbital hybridization with reactants. Herein, the reactive activities at engineering XRuEr (X=Fe, Co, Ni) surfaces can be effectively enhanced by self-containing atom-chains, in which this particular atom-scale-confined effect onto the reactive sites enables to optimize their catalytic activity. As a result, the potential barrier of rate-limiting step at FeRuEr surface effectively decreases to 1.37 eV from 1.98 eV by this intriguing self-containing Fe-atom-chains. These findings provide a new insight into improving OER performance by engineering surfaces.