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Gracia, Jose

Publications and source records attributed to Gracia, Jose.

4 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Spin-dependent electron transfer in electrochemically transparent van der Waals heterostructures for oxygen evolution reaction

Spin selective catalysis is an emerging approach for improving the thermodynamics and kinetics of reactions. The role of electron spins has been scarcely studied in catalytic reactions. One exception is the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) where strongly correlated metals and oxides are used as catalysts. In OER, spin alignment facilitates the transition of singlet state of the reactant to the triplet state of O 2 . However, the influence of strong correlations on spin exchange mechanism and spin selective thermodynamics of most catalytic reactions remain unclear. Here we decouple the strongly correlated catalyst from the electrolyte to study spin exchange in two-dimensional (2D) magnetic iron germanium telluride (FGT) heterostructure. We demonstrate that transmission of spin and electrochemical information between the catalyst and the reactant can occur through quantum exchange interaction despite the catalyst of FGT being completely encapsulated by graphene or hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The strong correlations in FGT that lead to enhanced spin exchange in OER are observed in graphene or hBN layers with thicknesses of up to 6 nm. We demonstrate that spin alignment in FGT leads to a lowering of thermodynamic barrier for adsorption of hydroxide ion and electron transfer to the catalyst. This results in up to fivefold enhancement in OER performance and improved kinetics. Our results provide clear evidence that transmission of both quantum mechanical and electrochemical information through quantum spin exchange interaction in FGT leads to an enhancement in catalytic performance.

2D materials↗
DOE OSTI2022

Reconstruction of Thiospinel to Active Sites and Spin Channels for Water Oxidation

Water electrolysis is a promising technique for carbon neutral hydrogen production. A great challenge remains at developing robust and low-cost anode catalysts. Many pre-catalysts are found to undergo surface reconstruction to give high intrinsic activity in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The reconstructed oxyhydroxides on the surface are active species and most of them outperform directly synthesized oxyhydroxides. The reason for the high intrinsic activity remains to be explored. Here, a study is reported to showcase the unique reconstruction behaviors of a pre-catalyst, thiospinel CoFe 2 S 4 , and its reconstruction chemistry for a high OER activity. The reconstruction of CoFe 2 S 4 gives a mixture with both Fe–S component and active oxyhydroxide (Co(Fe)O x H y ) because Co is more inclined to reconstruct as oxyhydroxide, while the Fe is more stable in Fe–S component in a major form of Fe 3 S 4 . The interface spin channel is demonstrated in the reconstructed CoFe 2 S 4 , which optimizes the energetics of OER steps on Co(Fe)O x H y species and facilitates the spin sensitive electron transfer to reduce the kinetic barrier of O–O coupling. The advantage is also demonstrated in a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) electrolyzer. Finally, this work introduces the feasibility of engineering the reconstruction chemistry of the precatalyst for high performance and durable MEA electrolyzers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Spin pinning effect to reconstructed oxyhydroxide layer on ferromagnetic oxides for enhanced water oxidation

Producing hydrogen by water electrolysis suffers from the kinetic barriers in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) that limits the overall efficiency. With spin-dependent kinetics in OER, to manipulate the spin ordering of ferromagnetic OER catalysts (e.g., by magnetization) can reduce the kinetic barrier. However, most active OER catalysts are not ferromagnetic, which makes the spin manipulation challenging. In this work, we report a strategy with spin pinning effect to make the spins in paramagnetic oxyhydroxides more aligned for higher intrinsic OER activity. The spin pinning effect is established in oxideFM/oxyhydroxide interface which is realized by a controlled surface reconstruction of ferromagnetic oxides. Under spin pinning, simple magnetization further increases the spin alignment and thus the OER activity, which validates the spin effect in rate-limiting OER step. The spin polarization in OER highly relies on oxyl radicals (O∙) created by 1 st dehydrogenation to reduce the barrier for subsequent O-O coupling.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗