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Updated: Aug 22, 2025

Synthesis and Performance Characterizations of Transition Metal Single Atom Catalyst for Electrochemical CO2 Reduction
Published on: April 10, 2018
Linking Enhanced Kinetics of Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction Reaction with Increased Utilization of Active Sites in
Lei Li1,2, Ming Xu3, Yameng Wang4
1Department of Chemistry, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Energy Materials for Electric Power, and Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Technologies (Ministry of Education), Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
Abstract:
Single-atom catalysts (SACs) are of tremendous current research due to maximized use of metal atoms and enhanced activity and selectivity for a great variety of chemical reactions. Hierarchically structured SACs have been explored to further increase the number and accessibility of active sites to realize the full potentials of SACs. However, though plausible-sounding, these supposed advantages of hierarchically structured SACs are largely untested. The assumed enhancing effects on the formation of intermediates on and the overall reaction kinetics remain largely unknown. Herein is reported a Fe-SAC with a hierarchical hollow structure (Fe/HH) that showed excellent activity in oxygen reduction reaction and proton exchange membrane fuel cell. Comparative experimental and computational studies with respect to Fe/SS-the counterpart of Fe/HH with a compact primary structure-reveal a significantly increased number of active sites and their utilization in Fe/HH as reflected by the facilitated formation of the rate-determining-step intermediate Fe-OOH*. This work thus establishes unambiguously the connection between the increased utilization of active sites and the enhanced kinetics of the electrocatalytic reduction of oxygen.
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