Discovery of Moire Quantum Catalysts

The rich reserves of water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen on earth can be converted into clean and sustainable fuels via electrochemical processes that are assisted by suitable electrocatalysts. Identifying efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts plays a critical role in clean energy conversion. It has been widely recognized that Pt is the best-performing catalyst for major electrochemical processes such as hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, the scarcity and high cost of Pt limited its widespread technological use, which has motivated a search for earth-abundant catalysts that can potentially replace Pt. 
Moiré quantum materials are artificially-created atomic structures that do not exist in nature. These materials are produced by mechanically assembling two periodic atomic membranes at a twist angle. Such twisting leads to new periodic structures with a much-enlarged moiré unit cell of 10 nm, compared to the natural atomic lattice unit of only a few Angstroms. Most importantly, within each moiré cell, the spatial variation of stacking configuration produces a corresponding variation of Gibbs free energy for hydrogen absorption in different local regions. Such variation enables the self-adaptive optimization of chemisorption property for a wide range of reaction environments. Through the physics-chemistry synergy, we aim to create a wide range of these new materials with the predicted structures and perform electrochemical measurements to investigate their properties. We anticipate that the one year’s collaboration could catalyze many more research activities and partnerships between physics and chemistry along the direction of quantum material catalysis.