Recently, the latest research results of Li Xiaolin, a distinguished associate researcher at the Institute of Intelligent Manufacturing Technology, were published in Advanced Functional Materials, a top international journal, and selected as the cover of its latest issue, titled “Interfacial Cladding Engineering Suppresses Atomic Thermal Migration to Fabricate Well-Defined Dual-Atom Electrocatalysts”. Li Xiaolin is the first corresponding author of this paper. It is also the first time that SZPT publishes a cover article in that journal as the first corresponding unit.

Advanced Functional Materials is one of Wiley’s top journals in the field of international engineering technology “Materials Science: Synthesis”, included in Nature Index, classified to CAS JCR Q1, involving chemistry, physics, materials, nanotechnology and other disciplines, with a 5-year average impact factor of 19.978, ranking 8^thin the 2022 h-index for global academic journals (chemistry and materials Science) released by Google Scholar.

Fuel cell is an important energy storage and conversion device. The research & development and manufacturing of its key components is the core issue of intelligent equipment manufacturing. For fuel cells, the cathode oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is a multi-electron and multi-proton coupling process, and the slow reaction rate is the key problem that restricts its development. In this work, a variety of diatomic metal electrocatalysts are prepared by using the boundary coating strategy to limit the thermal migration of metal atoms during the pyrolysis. Among them, the diatomic iron catalyst shows excellent catalytic performance in the four-electron ORR process, with the half-wave potential of 0.951V and 0.816V under alkaline and acidic conditions, respectively, especially under alkaline conditions, which is much higher than most of the reported non-precious metal catalysts. In situ spectroscopic studies and theoretical calculations show that the diatomic iron site has a highly efficient activation effect on O-O groups, causing rapid O-O bond breaking, and thus promoting the four-electron ORR process. This work provides a new idea for further rational design of fuel cells and intelligent manufacturing equipment.

Figure 1 Synthesis diagram of diatomic metal electrocatalyst (a) and characterization of its morphology and structure (b-i)

According to the introduction, Dr. Li Xiaolin graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology. She is a overseas high-level talent of Shenzhen, a member of the Association for Science and Technology of Shenzhen Polytechnic, and a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester, with Professor Martin Schroder as her co-supervisor. She has long been committed to the synthesis of metal-organic frame materials and their applications in the fields of energy, sensing and micro-nano motors. She has published more than 20 papers as the first author and corresponding author in Nature Communications, Advanced Functional Materials, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Carbon and other international renowned journals. At present, she is in charge of one projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation, two projects funded by Natural science Foundation of Guangdong Province, one scientific research project in Shenzhen, and one training project for excellent scientific and technological innovation talents in Shenzhen, and has participated in one national research project, three provincial and ministerial scientific research projects, and two municipal level projects. This research is strongly supported by SZPT, and also gains funding from the National Natural Science Foundation (Youth Program), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (General Program), Guangdong and Shenzhen Joint Fund (Youth Program) and Shenzhen Excellent Science and Technology Innovation Talents Training Project.

(Institute of Intelligent Manufacturing Technology)