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Mechanically mixing copper and silver into self-supporting electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution

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Abstract

Commercial hydrogen production involves the development of efficient hydrogen evolution reaction catalysts. Herein, we adopted a friction stir processing (FSP) technique to mix immiscible metals homogenously and obtain a self-supporting copper–silver (CuAg) catalyst. The gust of Ag atoms with larger atomic sizes caused a tensile strain in the Cu matrix. Meanwhile, the chemical-potential difference induced electron transfer from Cu to Ag, and the two factors jointly led to the upshift of Cu d-band and improved the catalytic activity. Consequently, the CuAg electrode exhibited a high turnover frequency (12 times that of pure Cu), a low overpotential at high current density (superior to platinum foil), and high durability (1.57% decay over 180 h). Our work demonstrates that FSP is a powerful method for preparing self-supporting catalysts of immiscible alloys with high catalytic performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51871160 and 52101266) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hefei Grant (No. 2022046).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of New Energy Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Xinzhuo Hu, Yi Feng, Zhennan Chen, Jing Mao, Jing Yang, Hui Liu, Pengfei Yin & Xiwen Du

  2. Institute of Advanced Welding Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Zhe Liu & Lei Cui

  3. Zijin Copper Co. LTD. Shanghang Country, Longyan, 364200, China

    Yongfeng Zhang

  4. Department of Materials Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Zhe Li

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  1. Xinzhuo Hu
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Correspondence to Pengfei Yin, Lei Cui or Xiwen Du.

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Hu, X., Liu, Z., Feng, Y. et al. Mechanically mixing copper and silver into self-supporting electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution. Int J Miner Metall Mater 30, 1906–1913 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-023-2695-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-023-2695-5

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