Dry‐Solid‐Electrochemical Synthesis: A General Method for Large Scale Synthesis of Single‐Atom Catalysts with High Metal loadings

• Published in: Angewandte Chemie 2025-01
• Main Authors: Gong, Xue, Bao, Jinpeng, Wang, Xian, Wan, Xin, Gu, Yaheng, Han, Ce, Shui, Jianglan, Su, Xiaozhi, Ge, Junjie, Xing, Wei, Song, Ping, Xu, Weilin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0044-8249; 1521-3757
• DOI: 10.1002/ange.202419374

Single‐atom catalysts (SACs) with high metal loadings are highly desirable but still challenging for large scale synthesis. Here we report a new technique named as dry‐solid‐electrochemical synthesis (DSES) for a general large‐scale synthesis of SACs with high metal loadings in an energy‐conservation and environment‐friendly way. With it, a series of pure carbon‐supported metal SACs (Platinum up to 35.0 wt %, Iridium 21.2 wt %, Ruthenium 20.4 wt % and Iron 17.6 wt %) with high metal loadings were obtained. Particularly, a Pt SAC with Pt 23.9 wt % and remarkable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) performance in fuel cells is synthesized on kilogram scale. Based on multiple control experiments, a unique redox mechanism for DSES process is proposed: metal precursors on conductive supports are reduced to metals via a homolytic cleavage of metal‐halogen bonds by the attacking of electrons flowing through the dry solid phase. Such versatile technique paves a new economical and environment‐friendly pathway for fabricating high‐metal‐loading SACs or atomic dispersion catalysts.