Professor XU Bingshe’s team, Dr. HAO Xiaodong has published high-level papers in top international journals in the field of materials

Author: HAO Xiaodong

Release: DU Yang

Translator: HOU Yumo

Recently, Associate Professor HAO Xiaodong, a youth talent from the team of Professor XU Bingshe of the Frontier Research Academy, has published a paper titled " Amorphous/Crystalline Heterostructured Cobalt-Vanadium Iron (Oxy)hydroxides for Highly Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction " in the top international journal " Advanced Energy Materials " (the latest impact factor 25.245) in the field of materials under Wiley. Shaanxi University of Science and Technology and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are the corresponding authors of this paper. Associate Professor HAO Xiaodong, Professor LIU Bin and Professor YAN Qingyu are the corresponding authors. This is the first time that SUST has published the paper in this journal as a corresponding author. The publication of this paper represents the new progress of cooperation between our university and other domestic and foreign universities, and has greatly improved our school's international influence in the field of materials science.

The research of this work is to solve the world problems of energy consumption and global warming, and to create hydrogen energy. Hydrogen production by electro catalytic water splitting is considered to be a promising green hydrogen production route, and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is one of its key technologies. At present, the catalysts used in OER reactions are limited to expensive and very scarce iridium and ruthenium-based materials, which largely limits the development and application of OER technology. Therefore, the development of earth-rich and inexpensive electro catalysts has always been a major challenge for practical applications. Based on this, this study has reported a method for preparing cobalt-vanadium-iron (oxygen) hydroxide (CoV-Fe0.28) ultra-thin nano-sheets by cation exchange method. The spherical aberration-corrected electron microscope was used to observe, analyze and study the chemical composition, ultra-microstructure and electronic structure of CoV-Fe0.28 nano-sheets, which are a mixture of crystalline and amorphous domains, as shown in Figure 1.

The research results show that the formation of its amorphous/crystalline heterostructure promotes the exposure of active centers, with higher active centers and the best oxygen-containing species adsorption energy; and it is found that the interface plays an important role in it— "Interfacial Catalysis". In addition, the synergistic effect of Co, V and Fe ions in the CoV-Fe0.28 catalyst regulates the local atomic coordination environment and electronic structure, thereby providing the best thermodynamic barrier for this basic reaction step, compared to commercial ones. Ruthenium dioxide catalyst exhibits more excellent OER activity. This research enriches interface science and catalysis theory in the "interface catalysis", which is of great significance for the efficient development of new hydrogen energy and ecological environment protection.

Figure 1. (a, b) XRD patterns of as-prepared CoV-HS, CoV-Fe0.16, CoV-Fe0.28, and CoV-Fe0.39 sample. (c) TEM of as-prepared CoV-Fe0. 28 sample. (d) High resolution TEM (HRTEM) image of CoV-Fe0.28 sample. (e, f) The corresponding FFT patterns of the selected regions marked by the blue and red squares, respectively, in (d). ( g) HAADF-STEM image and the corresponding energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy elemental maps of CoV-Fe0.28 sample.

Dr. HAO Xiaodong has graduated from the Advanced Institute of Materials Science, Tohoku University, Japan, under the tutelage of Professor Yuichi Ikuhara, an internationally renowned electron microscope expert. In 2018, he introduced talents as the "Top Youth" of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology and joined the team of Professor XU Bingshe. Dr. HAO Xiaodong mainly relies on the ultra-microstructure characterization platform of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology-double spherical aberration corrected transmission electron microscope (JEM GRAND ARM 300F) to realize the deep characterization and analysis of the ultra-microstructure, composition and structure of Nano-functional materials at the picometer scale, to build the relationship and law between it and the performance of catalysis and energy.

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Paper details: Min Kuang, Junming Zhang, et al., Xiaodong Hao*, Jianwei Xu, Chuntai Liu, Li Song, Bin Liu*, Qingyu Yan*,Amorphous/Crystalline Heterostructured Cobalt-Vanadium-Iron (Oxy)hydroxides for Highly Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction. Adv. Energy Mater. 2020 DOI: 10.1002/aenm.202002215.