New Insight into the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction under Buffered Near-Neutral pH Conditions: Enthalpy and Entropy of Activation
Type
ArticleAuthors
Shinagawa, Tatsuya
Takanabe, Kazuhiro

KAUST Department
Catalysis for Energy Conversion (CatEC)Chemical Science Program
KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC)
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2016-10-14Online Publication Date
2016-10-14Print Publication Date
2016-10-27Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/622435
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Electrochemical conversion of thermodynamically stable chemicals of water and carbon dioxide is regarded as a core technology for achieving sustainability in our society. In both cases, the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a key reaction, particularly at near-neutral pH. This study addresses the kinetic aspects of the HER in buffered near-neutral pH conditions using a variety of electrode materials (W, Ni, Pt, Au, and Cu) over a wide temperature range (299–346 K). When the overall performance was summarized with respect to the binding energy of the reaction intermediate species, a classic volcano-shaped relationship was obtained. Interestingly, the temperature sensitivity analysis disclosed that smaller activation energies did not always lead to higher performance in 1.5 mol L–1 K-phosphate solution (pH 5.8). Detailed analysis of the temperature- and potential-dependent parameters revealed that smaller activation energies coincided with smaller values of the pre-exponential factor in the Arrhenius’ equation (associated with the entropy of activation). Due to the trade-off relationship of enthalpy–entropy compensation in the current system, the conventional approach of mixing elements of lower and higher binding energies to the intermediate species failed: even though Ni–Cu showed lower apparent activation energy, its activity toward the HER was between that of Ni and Cu due to the lowered entropy of activation. This study demonstrates the unrevealed fundamental aspects of the HER in buffered near-neutral condition, which contributes to the rational development of efficient energy and material conversion systems.Citation
Shinagawa T, Takanabe K (2016) New Insight into the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction under Buffered Near-Neutral pH Conditions: Enthalpy and Entropy of Activation. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C 120: 24187–24196. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b07954.Sponsors
The research reported in this work was supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)Additional Links
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b07954ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b07954