Synthesis of high-entropy alloy nanoparticles on supports by the fast moving bed pyrolysis

Shaojie Gao; Shaoyun Hao; Zhennan Huang; Yifei Yuan; Song Han; Lecheng Lei; Xingwang Zhang; Reza Shahbazian-Yassar; Jun Lu

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-15934-1

Synthesis of high-entropy alloy nanoparticles on supports by the fast moving bed pyrolysis

Nat Commun. 2020 Apr 24;11(1):2016. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15934-1.

Authors

Shaojie Gao¹, Shaoyun Hao¹, Zhennan Huang², Yifei Yuan^{2

3}, Song Han⁴, Lecheng Lei^{1

5}, Xingwang Zhang^{6

7}, Reza Shahbazian-Yassar², Jun Lu⁸

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, 310027, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
² Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA.
³ Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA.
⁴ School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, 212013, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China.
⁵ Institute of Zhejiang University-Quzhou, 78 Jiuhua Boulevard North, 324000, Quzhou, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, 310027, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. xwzhang@zju.edu.cn.
⁷ Institute of Zhejiang University-Quzhou, 78 Jiuhua Boulevard North, 324000, Quzhou, China. xwzhang@zju.edu.cn.
⁸ Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA. junlu@anl.gov.

Abstract

High-entropy alloy nanoparticles (HEA-NPs) are important class of materials with significant technological potential. However, the strategies for synthesizing uniformly dispersed HEA-NPs on granular supports such as carbon materials, γ-Al₂O₃, and zeolite, which is vital to their practical applications, are largely unexplored. Herein, we present a fast moving bed pyrolysis strategy to immobilize HEA-NPs on granular supports with a narrow size distribution of 2 nm up to denary (MnCoNiCuRhPdSnIrPtAu) HEA-NPs at 923 K. Fast moving bed pyrolysis strategy ensures the mixed metal precursors rapidly and simultaneously pyrolyzed at high temperatures, resulting in nuclei with a small size. The representative quinary (FeCoPdIrPt) HEA-NPs exhibit high stability (150 h) toward hydrogen evolution reaction with high mass activity, which is 26 times higher than the commercial Pt/C at an overpotential of 100 mV. Our strategy provides an improved methodology for synthesizing HEA-NPs on various supports.