Driven by growing concerns about global warming and the depletion of petroleum resources, developing renewable energy production and storage technologies represent one of the major scientific challenges of the 21st century.  A critical element in pursuit of this quest is the discovery of efficient and cost-effective catalysts used in solar fuel production via electrochemical energy conversion processes such as oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), both of which are central to the efficiencies of direct-solar and electrolytic water-splitting devices, fuel cells, and metal-air batteries.  Although the Sabatier's principle provides a qualitative argument in tuning catalytic activity by varying the bond strength between catalyst surface and reactant/product (neither too strong nor too weak leading to the maximum activity at moderate bond strength), it has no predictive power to find catalysts with enhanced activity. Identifying a �design principle� that links catalyst properties to the catalytic activity is critical to accelerate the search for highly active catalysts based on abundant elements, and minimize the use of precious metals.

Design principles for oxygen reduction and evolution on oxide catalysts

243rd National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.