Title: Insight into the structure of non noble-metal-based electrocatalytic materials by X-ray absorption spectra

Abstract

Macroscopic physical and chemical properties of material strongly rely on the coordination structure and electronic structure, involving the evolution of chemical reactants and structural transformation of catalyst during the in situ chemical reaction process. Exploring the structure in the atomic and molecular level should be supported by in-situ characterization technology, in which synchrotron radiation based techniques have become an indispensable method. X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) contain rich information concerning the local structure, such as coordination numbers and near-neighbor distances obtained by hard XAS analysis, as well as electronic structure information obtained by soft XAS analysis. In this talk, I will report some works on the application of X-ray absorption spectra in non noble metal based electro catalytic materials. Our research revealed that the surface structural evolution is crucial for achieving high OER activity.