High Performance Bifunctional Electrocatalysts

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to invite you to contribute full papers, communications, and reviews to the Special Issue on “High Performance Bifunctional Electrocatalysts” in Materials. This Special Issue will address advances in activity and/or longevity of both materials and devices, as well as structure–property relationships.

Bifunctional electrocatalysts are critical components of advanced energy storage and conversion devices, such as metal-air batteries (MAB), regenerative fuel cells (RFC), and overall water-splitting systems. These catalysts must show high performance under the highly-oxidizing conditions of an oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and the highly-reducing conditions of an oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in the case of MABs and RFCs or a hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) for overall water-splitting. While bifunctionality of the OER-ORR and OER-HER couples is the most widely studied, this Special Issue is open to all bifunctional reactions couples. These strongly varying and harsh operation conditions also impose special requirements on the stability of catalyst materials. Thus, activity and stability during bifunctional operation are key issues in the development of improved materials for bifunctional devices.    

This Special Issue presents an excellent opportunity for researchers around the world to disseminate the interdisciplinary aspects of their work to the growing community of bifunctional electrocatalysis. Contributions are welcome that address improvements in activity, stability, or both, of a catalyst material or bifunctional devices. A promising approach is the synthesis of advanced nanostructured materials with high surface areas for composite electrodes, such as oxides on graphene, oxides on chalcogenides or pnictogens and core-shell structures. Furthermore, fundamental studies are welcome to identify optimal material or electrolyte compositions for high activity and stability using experimental and/or theoretical approaches. In situ studies of the active states during bifunctional operation and thorough post-mortem characterization using microscopy are encouraged to understand materials activation and degradation. Your contributions to this Special Issue will create a snapshot of the current breadth and depth of research on bifunctional electrocatalysts.

Dr. Marcel Risch
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Bifunctional catalysts
• Metal-air batteries
• Regenerative fuel cells
• Overall water-splitting
• Structure-property relationships
• In situ studies
• Advanced materials
• Composite electrodes
• Electrocatalysis
• DFT