Beyond current frontiers of electrocatalysis
Review paper
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5599/jese.2634Keywords:
Activation energy, preexponential factor, barrier, reactant-catalyst collisions, cteristic vibrations, tunnelingAbstract
One of the key reasons why the transition to renewable energy sources is progressing slowly is the low efficiency of processes at electrified interfaces where electricity is converted and stored as chemical energy. The challenge behind low efficiency is sluggish electrochemical conversion reactions. To resolve low efficiency, it is necessary to comprehend the intrinsic reasons behind the unusually complex phenomena of converting electrical energy into chemical energy, and vice versa, chemical energy into electrical energy. An important example is the electrolysis of water, where, after decades of research, it is not clear how to significantly accelerate the processes of hydrogen and oxygen generation. Of critical importance for the control of the water electrolysis mechanism is understanding the origins of the electrocatalytic activity. If we ask a key question from a conceptual point of view, namely: what are the origins of electrocatalytic activity? The answer will be, in most cases, as it was 70 years ago. Namely, the paradigm of electrocatalysis is the Sabatier principle, which suggests optimal ("not too strong, not too weak") binding of intermediates as the main prerequisite for a high reaction rate. Conventional wisdom suggests that confirmation of this should be a linear relationship between the adsorption energy of the intermediate and the activation energy, known as the Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi relation. However, recent results show that lowering the activation energy is not necessarily beneficial for increasing the reaction rate. In this work, some fundamentally important questions about the nature of electrocatalytic activity will be raised. Identifying and analyzing these issues can be an important trigger and driver towards efficient water electrolysis and a more comprehensive understanding of electrocatalysis as a scientific field of key importance for the conversion, storage and utilization of energy from renewable sources.
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