Theoretical realization of hybrid Weyl state and associated high catalytic performance for hydrogen evolution in NiSi
Wei Liu1,2, Xiaoming Zhang1,2, Weizhen Meng1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Reliability and Intelligence of Electrical Equipment, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China.
Abstract:
For electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), developing high-performance catalysts without containing precious metals have been a major research focus in the present. Herein, we show the feasibility of HER catalytic enhancement in Ni-based materials based on topological engineering from hybrid Weyl states. Via a high-throughput computational screening from ∼140,000 materials, we identify that a chiral compound NiSi is a hybrid Weyl semimetal (WSM) showing bulk type-I and type-II Weyl nodes and long surface Fermi arcs near the Fermi level. Sufficient evidences verify that topological charge carriers participate in the HER process, and make the certain surface of NiSi highly active with the Gibbs free energy nearly zero (0.07 eV), which is even lower than Pt and locates on the top of the volcano plots. This work opens up a new routine to develop no-precious-metal-containing HER catalysts via topological engineering, rather than traditional defect engineering, doping engineering, or strain engineering.
More Related Videos
06:32A Simple, Low-cost, and Robust System to Measure the Volume of Hydrogen Evolved by Chemical Reactions with Aqueous Solutions
Published on: August 17, 2016
09:18Simple Methods for the Preparation of Non-noble Metal Bulk-electrodes for Electrocatalytic Applications
Published on: June 21, 2017
Related Concept Videos
Reduction of Alkenes: Asymmetric Catalytic Hydrogenation
The metal catalyst used can be either heterogeneous or homogeneous. When hydrogenation of an alkene generates a chiral center, a pair of enantiomeric products is expected to form. However, an enantiomeric excess of one of the products can be facilitated using an enantioselective reaction or an...
Reduction of Alkenes: Catalytic Hydrogenation
Metals like palladium, platinum, and nickel are commonly used in their solid forms — fine powder on an inert surface. As these catalysts remain insoluble in the reaction mixture, they are referred to as heterogeneous catalysts.
The hydrogenation process takes place on the...
Reduction of Alkynes to cis-Alkenes: Catalytic Hydrogenation
Like alkenes, alkynes can be reduced to alkanes in the presence of transition metal catalysts such as Pt, Pd, or Ni. The reaction involves two sequential syn additions of hydrogen via a cis-alkene intermediate.
Catalysis
Reduction of Benzene to Cyclohexane: Catalytic Hydrogenation
Turnover Number and Catalytic Efficiency
Chymotrypsin is a pancreatic enzyme that breaks down proteins during digestion....
