Modulating Pt surfaces through the introduction of lattice distortion emerges as immensely effective strategy that enhances the kinetics of alkaline hydrogen evolution and oxidation processes. In this study, we fabricated lattice-distorted Pt wrinkled nanoparticles (LD-Pt WNPs) for efficient hydrogen electrocatalysis. The LD-Pt WNPs not only outperform the Pt/C benchmark in hydrogen oxidation reaction, achieving an excellent mass-specific current of 968.5 mA·mg_Pt⁻¹ (9 times that of Pt/C), but also demonstrate outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction activity with a small overpotential of 58.0 mV. Comprehensive experiments and density functional theory calculations reveal that lattice defects introduce an abundance of unsaturated coordination atoms while modifying the d-band center of Pt. This dual effect optimizes the binding strength of crucial H and OH intermediates, leading to a significant reduction in the energy barrier of the reaction bottleneck, commonly known as the Volmer step. This work unveils a fresh viewpoint on projecting and developing high efficiency electrocatalysts through defect engineering.

Enhancing catalytic activity through modulating the interaction between N-doped carbon and metal phosphides clusters is an effective approach. Herein, the electronic structure modulation of CoP₂ supported N-modified carbon (CoP₂/NC) has been designed and prepared as efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Notably, CoP₂/NC-1 catalyst exhibits impressive performance in alkaline media, with an ORR half-wave potential of 0.84 V, as well as OER and HER overpotentials of 290 and 129 mV (at 10 mA·cm⁻²), respectively. In addition, CoP₂/NC-1 produces a power density as high as 172.9 mW·cm⁻², and excellent reversibility of 100 h at 20 mA·cm⁻² in home-made Zn-air batteries. The experimental results demonstrate that the synergistic interactions between N modified carbon substrate and CoP₂ material significantly enhance the kinetics of ORR, OER, and HER. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal the strong electrons redistribution of CoP₂ induced by high-density N atoms at the interface, thus optimizing the key intermediates and significantly lower the energy barrier of reactions. These electronic adjustments of CoP₂ greatly enhance its kinetics of ORR/OER/HER, leading to faster reactions. This study provides profound insights into the specific modification of CoP₂ by N-doped carbon, enabling the construction of efficient catalysts.

Platinum based alloys are hereinto the mostly used methanol oxidation catalysts. However, there are limited ways to improve the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) performance of catalysts in terms of both activity and stability. Herein we developed a simple heat-treatment method to synthesize PtCu₃/C intermetallic compound catalyst with lattice compression. The as-prepared PtCu₃/C-1000 exhibited high specific activity of 3.23 mA·cm^–1 and mass activity of 1,200 mA·mg_Pt^–1, which is much higher than the PtCu₃/C-untreated and commercial Pt/C catalysts, respectively. The XAS and DFT results shows the high activity of the catalyst towards MOR comes from the tightening of the Pt-M bond, which leads to the decrease of Fermi energy level and the make it difficulty in adsorbing carbon intermediates, thus releasing more active sites to promote the improvement of MOR performance. Moreover, the PtCu₃/C-1000 shows better stability which is due to the surface-rich Pt prevents Cu from dissolution.