Issue 11, 2019

Nanoporous high-entropy alloys for highly stable and efficient catalysts

Abstract

Controllably incorporating multiple immiscible metal elements into one single nanostructure has immeasurable technological and scientific potential, but it remains a challenge for the conventional bottom-up synthetic methods. Herein, we presented a general and scalable route to prepare multi-component nanostructured alloys referred to as nanoporous high-entropy alloys (np-HEAs) by combining bulk melting, fast cooling, and dealloying. To demonstrate this concept, we synthesized senary AlNiCuPtPdAu, octonary AlNiCuPtPdAuCoFe, and senary all-non-noble metal AlNiCuMoCoFe np-HEA with ligament sizes of ∼2–3 nm and precisely controlled composition by dealloying the designed precursor alloys. With a naturally formed thin oxide layer of spinel γ-Al2O3, AlNiCuPtPdAu np-HEA exhibited greatly enhanced high-temperature stability (up to 600 °C) and CO oxidation activity. Interestingly, with the removal of the surface oxide layer, np-HEA still showed good resistance to coarsening at 200 °C for 10 h due to its intrinsically low diffusivity originating from the multiple-principal-element mixing effect. For electrocatalysis, np-HEA with a low Pt loading amount exhibited 10 times the mass activity of Pt/C for oxygen reduction reaction and maintained 92.5% of its initial activity after 100k electrochemical cycles.

Graphical abstract: Nanoporous high-entropy alloys for highly stable and efficient catalysts

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
15 Jan 2019
Accepted
13 Feb 2019
First published
14 Feb 2019

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 6499-6506

Nanoporous high-entropy alloys for highly stable and efficient catalysts

H. Qiu, G. Fang, Y. Wen, P. Liu, G. Xie, X. Liu and S. Sun, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 6499 DOI: 10.1039/C9TA00505F

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