Recently, the research team led by Member of the European Academy of Sciences Su Baolian and Professor Liu Yong from WUT has made significant advances in the atomic‑level precise design of electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reactions at fuel‑cell cathodes. The relevant findings, titled Single‑particle atomic‑scale strain‑gradient engineering for high‑performance fuel cells, were published in Nature Communications on July 15. This represents another important advance by Professor Liu Yong’s group in strain engineering of noble‑metal catalysts and fuel‑cell applications, following their earlier publication in the same journal (Nat. Commun. 2023, 14, 1518) in 2023.

For the first time, work shifts the conceptual basis of strain engineering from uniform, particle-averaged tuning to single-particle, atomic-scale strain-field programming. It establishes a new strategy for the precise engineering of spatially differentiated active sites, offering fresh insights to address the long‑standing bottleneck of balancing catalytic activity and stability in complex energy‑conversion reactions. The outcomes are expected to advance the development of low‑platinum high‑performance fuel‑cell catalytic materials and lay a critical material foundation for the large‑scale deployment of the hydrogen‑energy industry.

This work was supported by the Major Program and General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, and the Youth Innovation Research Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing. WUT is the lead institution for the study. The State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing and the School of Integrated Circuits are the corresponding institutions for the paper. Academician Su BaoLian, Academician Zhao Dongyuan, Researcher Chen Lihua and Professor Liu Yong are co‑corresponding authors of the paper.

Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467‑026‑75485‑9

Written by: Liu Yong, Huang Linglin

Rewritten by: Lin Qiaochu

Edited by: Li Huihui, Li Tiantian

Source: Institute of New Materials (State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology For Materials Synthesis and Processing)