Exploring Optimal Water Splitting Bifunctional Alloy Catalyst by Pareto Active Learning

Design of bifunctional multimetallic alloy catalysts, which are one of the most promising candidates for water splitting, is a significant issue for the efficient production of renewable energy. Owing to large dimensions of the components and composition of multimetallic alloys, as well as the trade-off behavior in terms of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) overpotentials for bifunctional catalysts, it is difficult to search for high-performance bifunctional catalysts with multimetallic alloys using conventional trial-and-error experiments. Here, an optimal bifunctional catalyst for water splitting is obtained by combining Pareto active learning and experiments, where 110 experimental data points out of 77946 possible points lead to effective model development. The as-obtained bifunctional catalysts for HER and OER exhibit high performance, which is revealed by model development using Pareto active learning; among the catalysts, an optimal catalyst (Pt_0.15 Pd_0.30 Ru_0.30 Cu_0.25 ) exhibits a water splitting behavior of 1.56 V at a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 . This study opens avenues for the efficient exploration of multimetallic alloys, which can be applied in multifunctional catalysts as well as in other applications.