The Influence of Elastic Strain on Catalytic Activity Towards the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

Understanding the role of elastic strain in modifying catalytic reaction rates is crucial for catalyst design, but experimentally, this effect is often coupled with a ligand effect. To isolate the strain effect, we have investigated the influence of externally applied elastic strain on the catalytic activity of metal films towards the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). We show that elastic strain tunes the catalytic activity in a controlled and predictable way. Both theory and experiment show strain controls reactivity in a controlled manner consistent with the qualitative predictions of the HER volcano plot and the d-band theory: Ni and Pt activity were accelerated by compression, while Cu activity was accelerated by tension. By isolating the elastic strain effect from the ligand effect, this study provides a greater insight into the role of elastic strain in controlling electrocatalytic activity.

arXiv comment24 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Enhanced Catalytic Activity in Strained Chemically Exfoliated WS2 Nanosheets for Hydrogen Evolution
• On the Role of Elastic Strain on Electrocatalysis of Oxygen Reduction Reaction on Pt
• A phase field approach to no slip boundary conditions in dissipative particle dynamics and other particle models for fluid flow in geometrically complex confined systems

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Facile synthesis of CoSi alloy with rich vacancy for base- and solvent-free aerobic oxidation of aromatic alcohols