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In situ identification of active sites during electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

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Abstract

The rational design of efficient, low cost, and durable catalysts is critical for the industrial applications of electrocatalytic hydrogen production. A key step towards the structure design of high-performance catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) relies on the in situ identification of the catalytic active sites in the process of HER, which is of great challenge. In this review, we summarize the recent advances on the in situ investigation of the active sites on low dimensional catalysts for HER. We highlight the characterization techniques used for this purpose, including scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM), electrochemical scanning tunneling microscopy (EC-STM), in situ liquid phase transmission electron microscopy (LP-TEM), and in situ spectroscopic tools. We conclude with an overview of the main technical limitations for the current approaches and give an outlook to future opportunities in this emerging field.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB36000000), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFB2205901), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22105049), and Tsinghua-Toyota Joint Research Fund and Tsinghua-Jiangyin Innovation Special Fund (No. TJISF).

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  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China

    Dongge Wang, Juanxia Wu & Liming Xie

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Dongge Wang, Juanxia Wu & Liming Xie

  3. Key Laboratory of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Liying Jiao

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  1. Dongge Wang
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Wang, D., Wu, J., Jiao, L. et al. In situ identification of active sites during electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Nano Res. 16, 12910–12918 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5686-y

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