Vasiliki Tileli’s group at EPFL in collaboration with researchers at MIT observed the switchable wetting of single nanoparticles. They achieved this by electrochemical liquid-phase TEM monitoring of a highly OER-active perovskite (BSCF) particles under potential cycling using Hummingbird Scientific’s  bulk liquid-electrochemistry TEM holder.  By performing these experiments, they were able to link physical wetting with the chemical oxygen evolution reaction of single particles. This relationship provides fundamental insights into liquid-solid interfacial reactions of oxygen-evolving oxides.

Top left: Polarization curves of three CV cycles in 0.1 M KOH in the TEM liquid-electrochemical holder. Top right: BF-TEM images at different applied potential and wettings stages for the first, second and third electrochemical cycles. Middle: Schematic of reversible liquid movement surrounding BSCF particles in the TEM liquid-electrochemical cell. Shown are states below 1.2V where the hydrophobic surface character of the BSCF surface accumulates liquid and the and the final state above 1.65 V where a more hydrophilic surface character is shown. Bottom: these graphs show the measured cloud size around the particle during cycling extracted from data as shown in the Top Right. © 2022 nature catalysis.

Reference: Tzu-Hsien Shen, Liam Spillane, Jiayu Peng, Yang Shao-Horn & Vasiliki Tileli “Switchable wetting of oxygen-evolving oxide catalysts” © 2022 nature catalysis. Full Paper

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