Chiral electrocatalysts eclipse water splitting metrics through spin control

Continual progress in technologies that rely on water splitting are often hampered by the slow kinetics associated with the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here, we show that the efficiency of top-performing catalysts can be improved, beyond typical thermodynamic considerations, through control ove...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2023-02, Vol.14 (1), p.1067-1067, Article 1067
Main Authors: Vadakkayil, Aravind, Clever, Caleb, Kunzler, Karli N., Tan, Susheng, Bloom, Brian P., Waldeck, David H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/299/886
639/638/161/886
639/638/440/947
639/638/77/886
Adsorbates
Alignment
Catalysts
Chirality
Cobalt
Efficiency
Electrocatalysts
Electrolysis
Electrolytes
Humanities and Social Sciences
Magnetic fields
Metal oxides
multidisciplinary
Nanocatalysis
Nanoparticles
Oxygen evolution reactions
Reaction intermediates
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Selectivity
Thermodynamics
Water splitting
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Summary:Continual progress in technologies that rely on water splitting are often hampered by the slow kinetics associated with the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here, we show that the efficiency of top-performing catalysts can be improved, beyond typical thermodynamic considerations, through control over reaction intermediate spin alignment during electrolysis. Spin alignment is achieved using the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect and the improvement in OER manifests as an increase in Faradaic efficiency, decrease in reaction overpotential, and change in the rate determining step for chiral nanocatalysts over compositionally analogous achiral nanocatalysts. These studies illustrate that a defined spatial orientation of the nanocatalysts is not necessary to exhibit spin selectivity and therefore represent a viable platform for employing the transformative role of chirality in other reaction pathways and processes. Here, the authors demonstrate that imprinting chirality onto top performing oxygen evolution reaction catalysts enhances their performance beyond that expected from thermodynamic considerations based on reaction intermediate adsorbate catalyst interaction energies.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-023-36703-w