Active learning accelerated exploration of single-atom local environments in multimetallic systems for oxygen electrocatalysis

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) with multiple active sites exhibit high activity for a wide range of sluggish reactions, but identifying optimal multimetallic SAC is challenging due to the vast design space. Here, we present a self-driving computational strategy that combines first-principles calculations and equivariant graph neural network (GNN) to explore over 30,000 binary metallic sites with varying combinations of 3d transition metals and different ligand environments for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR/OER). Active learning facilitates the investigation of the search space by balancing the exploration of unseen atomic structures with the exploitation of the active ones. The GNN learns the chemical environments to capture composition-structure-property relationships for ORR/OER activity and selectivity. The computational predictions of promising Co-Fe, Co-Co, and Co-Zn metal pairs are consistent with the state-of-the-art results of experimental measurements reported in the literature. This approach can be extended to a broader class of multi-element high entropic materials systems.