Unveiling the Mechanisms Ruling the Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction with Mitrofanovite Pt3Te4

Danil W Boukhvalov; Jia Cheng; Gianluca D'Olimpio; François C Bocquet; Chia-Nung Kuo; Anan Bari Sarkar; Barun Ghosh; Ivana Vobornik; Jun Fujii; Kuan Hsu; Li-Min Wang; Ori Azulay; Gopi Nath Daptary; Doron Naveh; Chin Shan Lue; Mykhailo Vorokhta; Amit Agarwal; Lixue Zhang; Antonio Politano

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01261

Unveiling the Mechanisms Ruling the Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction with Mitrofanovite Pt₃Te₄

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Sep 9;12(35):8627-8636. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01261. Epub 2021 Sep 2.

Authors

Danil W Boukhvalov^{1

2}, Jia Cheng³, Gianluca D'Olimpio⁴, François C Bocquet^{5

6}, Chia-Nung Kuo⁷, Anan Bari Sarkar⁸, Barun Ghosh⁸, Ivana Vobornik⁹, Jun Fujii⁹, Kuan Hsu¹⁰, Li-Min Wang¹⁰, Ori Azulay¹¹, Gopi Nath Daptary¹², Doron Naveh¹¹, Chin Shan Lue⁷, Mykhailo Vorokhta¹³, Amit Agarwal⁸, Lixue Zhang³, Antonio Politano^{4

14}

Affiliations

¹ College of Science, Institute of Materials Physics and Chemistry, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, P. R. China.
² Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics Department, Ural Federal University, Mira Street 19, 620002 Ekaterinburg, Russia.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, Shandong, P. R. China.
⁴ INSTM and Department of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of L'Aquila, via Vetoio, 67100 L'Aquila (AQ), Italy.
⁵ Peter Grünberg Institut (PGI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
⁶ Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), Fundamentals of Future Information Technology, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
⁷ Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, 1 Ta-Hsueh Road, 70101 Tainan, Taiwan.
⁸ Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208016, India.
⁹ CNR-IOM, TASC Laboratory, Area Science Park-Basovizza, 34139 Trieste, Italy.
¹⁰ Department of Physics/Graduate Institute of Applied Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.
¹¹ Faculty of Engineering and Institute of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
¹² Department of Physics and Institure of Nanotechnology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.
¹³ Charles University, V Holesovickǎch 2, Prague 8, 18000 Prague, Czechia.
¹⁴ CNR-IMM Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi, VIII strada 5, I-95121 Catania, Italy.

Abstract

By means of electrocatalytic tests, surface-science techniques and density functional theory, we unveil the physicochemical mechanisms ruling the electrocatalytic activity of recently discovered mitrofanovite (Pt₃Te₄) mineral. Mitrofanovite represents a very promising electrocatalyst candidate for energy-related applications, with a reduction of costs by 47% compared to pure Pt and superior robustness to CO poisoning. We show that Pt₃Te₄ is a weak topological metal with the $Z_{2}$ invariant, exhibiting electrical conductivity (∼4 × 10⁶ S/m) comparable with pure Pt. In hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the electrode based on bulk Pt₃Te₄ shows a very small overpotential of 46 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 and a Tafel slope of 36-49 mV dec^-1 associated with the Volmer-Heyrovsky mechanism. The outstanding ambient stability of Pt₃Te₄ also provides durability of the electrode and long-term stability of its efficient catalytic performances.