Room Temperature Electrochemical-Shock Synthesis of Solid-Solution Medium-Entropy Alloy Nanoparticles for Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

For millennia, humankind has discovered great benefits in alloying materials. Over the past 100 years, a renaissance in nanoscience has cemented the importance of nanoparticles in a variety of fields ranging from energy storage and conversion to cell biology. While many synthetic strategies exist for nanoparticle and alloy nanoparticle formation, new methods are necessary to create nanoparticles under unprecedented conditions. Here, we demonstrate a simple technique to electrodeposit solid-solution alloy nanoparticles at room temperature. When metal salts of platinum, gold, and palladium are confined to nanodroplets suspended in oil, and then a nanodroplet collides with a sufficiently negative-biased electrode to reduce the metal salts at the mass-transfer limitation, solid-solution alloy nanoparticles form. High-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy and single atom energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirm the solid-solution microstructure of the nanoparticles. The results also confirm the nanodroplet’s ability to tune alloy microstructures from amorphous to solid-solution. We further extend our technique by adding salts of silver, which lead to the synthesis of polycrystalline medium-entropy alloys. Finally, we go on to show the application of our midentropy alloys toward renewable and clean energy devices by highlighting their electrocatalytic activity toward hydrogen evolution reaction. Our method is unrivaled in its simplicity and will find applications across various fields of study.