High-Density Dual-Structure Single-Atom Pt Electrocatalyst for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution and Multimodal Sensing.

Abstract

Herein, we report a high-density dual-structure single-atom catalyst (SAC) by creating a large number of vacancies of O and Ti in two-dimensional (2D) Ti₃C₂ to immobilize Pt atoms (SA Pt-Ti₃C₂). The SA Pt-Ti₃C₂ showed excellent performance toward the pH-universal electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and multimodal sensing. For HER catalysis, compared to the commercial 20 wt % Pt/C, the Pt mass activities of SA Pt-Ti₃C₂ at the overpotentials of ∼30 and 110 mV in acid and alkaline media are 45 and 34 times higher, respectively. More importantly, during the alkaline HER process, an interesting synergetic effect between Pt-C and Pt-Ti sites that dominated the Volmer and Heyrovsky steps, respectively, was revealed. Moreover, the SA Pt-Ti₃C₂ catalyst exhibited high sensitivity (0.62-2.65 μA μM^-1) and fast response properties for the multimodal identifications of ascorbic acid, dopamine, uric acid, and nitric oxide under the assistance of machine learning.