Experimental Sabatier plot for predictive design of active and stable Pt-alloy oxygen reduction reaction catalysts

A critical technological roadblock to the widespread adoption of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells is the development of highly active and durable platinum-based catalysts for accelerating the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction, which has largely relied on anecdotal discoveries so far. While the oxygen binding energy ∆ E O has been frequently used as a theoretical descriptor for predicting the activity, there is no known descriptor for predicting durability. Here we developed a binary experimental descriptor that captures both the strain and Pt transition metal coupling contributions through X-ray absorption spectroscopy and directly correlated the binary experimental descriptor with the calculated ∆ E O of the catalyst surface. This leads to an experimentally validated Sabatier plot to predict both the catalytic activity and stability for a wide range of Pt-alloy oxygen reduction reaction catalysts. Based on the binary experimental descriptor, we further designed an oxygen reduction reaction catalyst wherein high activity and stability are simultaneously achieved.