Controllable Synthesis of Metal Nanoparticles for Electrocatalytic Activity Enhancement - Atomically-Precise Methods for Synthesis of Solid Catalysts - page 225

d n 9 r 4 n g | 5

CHAPTER 9
Controllable Synthesis of Metal
Nanoparticles for
Electrocatalytic Activity
Enhancement

QING LI, WENLEI ZHU AND SHOUHENG SUN*

Department of Chemistry, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
*Email: [e-mail]

9.1 Introduction
The accelerated consumption of fossil fuels for energy use, coupled with the
limited supply of these natural resources, has motivated the serious search
for alternative sources of energy that are renewable and sustainable. Elec-
trochemical systems, such as fuel cells, batteries, and water splitting devices,
represent the most ecient and environmentally friendly technologies for
energy conversion and storage to date. 1 They are operated in a similar
electrochemical principle and require oxidation and reduction reactions
occurring at two separated electrodes to generate power or to produce fuels.
Some typical electrochemical reactions explored extensively in recent years
are hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)
in fuel cells, ORR and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in metal-air batteries,
and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and OER in water splitting. So far,
the major obstacles hampering the commercialization of these technologies
lie in the significant reaction over-potentials observed on the catalysts used

.