(585bv) Superwetting Electrodes for Gas-Involved Electrocatalysis

Wenwen Xu, Zhiyi Lu, Yingjie Li, Xiaoming Sun*

State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China

ABSTRACT

Electrochemical gas-involved reactions, including gas-evolution reaction and gas-consumption reaction, are essential parts in current energy conversion processes and industries. Although the exploration of the highly active catalysts has been very mature, less attention was paid on the gas management during the gas-involved reactions. Inspired from bio-inspired materials, scientists find that bio-mimicked electrodes with superwetting property will influence the gas transportation process during the electrochemical reactions. Our group fortunately found that the interface behavior of electrode could be tuned by surface architecture construction, for example, transferring from aerophobic to superaerophobic by engineering a series of superwetting micro-/nanostructured electrodes, eg. MoS₂. Cu nanoarray and Pt pine-like films ^[1-4]; transferring from aerophibic to superaerophibic by poly(tetrafluoroethylene)(PTFE) modifying, eg. CoNCNT@CFP.^[5] For gas-evolution reaction, constructing nanostructured superaerophobic electrodes is effective to improve the performance by enlarging the bubble contact angle and reducing the bubble adhesion force with the surface of the electrode, thus insuring smooth leaving of the gas products. As to the gas consumption reactions, the superaerophibic electrodes are able to improve the performance by providing an unblocked gas diffusion pathway and a smooth electron transport. Therefore, construction of superwetting surface (auperserophobic for gas evolution reaction and superaerophibic for gas consumption reaction) can boost the performances of the electrodes by managing the surface bubbles.

References

[1] Z. Lu, W. Zhu, X. Yu, H. Zhang, Y. Li, X. Sun, X. Wang, H. Wang, J. Wang, J. Luo, X. Lei, L. Jiang. Adv. Mater. 26(2014) 2683-2687.

[2] Y. Li, H. Zhang, T. Xu, Z. Lu, X. Wu, P. Wan, X. Sun, L. Jiang. Adv. Funct. Mater. 25( 2015) 1737-1744.

[3] Z. Lu,M. Sun, T. Xu, Y. Li, W. Xu, Z. Chang, Y. Ding, X. Sun, L. Jiang. Adv. Mater. 27(2015) 2361-2366.

[4] X. Liu, Z. Chang, L. Luo, T. Xu, X. Lei, J. Liu, X. Sun. Chem. Mater., 26(2014) 1889-1895.

[5] Z. Lu, W. Xu, J. Ma, Y. Li, X. Sun, L. Jiang. Adv. Mater, 28(2016)155-7161.

Short BIOGRAPHY

Prof. Xiaoming Sun

State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology

Email: sunxm@mail.buct.edu.cn

Professor Xiaoming Sun gained his B.S. degree and Ph.D. in Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2005, respectively. After postdoctoral work at Stanford University, he joined State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology at 2008. His main research interests focus on wetting regulation of electrode interface for electrocatalysis, separation and assembly of inorganic nanostructures, synthesis and separation of carbon nanomaterials and their composites, and structure control and opto-/electro- property investigations of oxide nanoarrays. Recently, Prof. Sun has made original and innovative contributions to the discovery and exploration of gas-involved behaviour of superwetting electrodes.

Professor Xiaoming Sun makes great contributions to nanomaterial and nanotechnology for his outstanding creativity and productivity. He has authored and co-authored 68 journal articles (eg. J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Adv. Mater., ACS Nano.). His entire publications have been cited for over 14717 times [an updated report from google scholars: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=_G0EETMAAAAJ&hl=zh-CN&oi=ao]. The H-index of his publications is 49 per SCI data base.