Effect of surface-bound sulfide on oxygen reduction reaction on Pt: Breaking the scaling relationship and mechanistic insights

Yan-Yan Wang; De-Jun Chen; Thomas C Allison; YuYe J Tong

doi:10.1063/1.5053815

Effect of surface-bound sulfide on oxygen reduction reaction on Pt: Breaking the scaling relationship and mechanistic insights

J Chem Phys. 2019 Jan 28;150(4):041728. doi: 10.1063/1.5053815.

Authors

Yan-Yan Wang¹, De-Jun Chen¹, Thomas C Allison², YuYe J Tong¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
² Chemical Informatics Research Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8320, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.

PMID: 30709293
DOI: 10.1063/1.5053815

Abstract

A combined in situ electrochemical attenuated total reflection-surface enhanced IR absorption spectroscopy, microkinetic simulation, and density functional theory calculation study shows that not only can the adsorbed sulfide disproportionally affect the surface binding of OOH^* (E_OOH^* ) vs OH^* (E_OH^* ), i.e., breaking the original scaling relationship of pure metals (Ir, Pd, Pt, Au), to enhance oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity but can also be used as a reaction pathway alternating species to help deepen our mechanistic understanding of ORR.