The Research Management Center congratulates Prof. Dr. Zheng Jin-Cheng, the Director of Innovation Center of XMUM, for co-corresponding a paper which has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the world's most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals.

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The paper titled “Direct high-resolution mapping of electrocatalytic activity of semi-two-dimensional catalysts with single-edge sensitivity” was published online on 24 May 2019. The work was a collaborative effort of Prof. Zheng and seven scientists with affiliations to leading research institutions in the US and China – including Prof. Michael Mirkin’s group at Queens College, City University of New York; Prof. Ryan Richards from Colorado School of Mines, Prof. Lin Feng from Virginia Tech, and Prof. Xin Huolin from University of California, Irvine.

The authors stated the significance of the work:

“A major challenge in electrocatalysis is pinpointing active sites on the surface, particularly when they are on the atomic scale. Direct electrochemical measurements of individual material edges have not yet been reported. Here we use the scanning electrochemical microscope (SECM) to independently image topography and local catalytic activity. The unprecedented 15 nm spatial resolution and high sensitivity allowed us to distinguish the higher activities of the materials edges from that of the fully coordinated surfaces in operando. The spatially resolved electrochemical information combined with state-of-the-art electron tomography that unravels the three dimensional complexity of the edges and ab initio calculations revealed the intricate coordination-dependent catalytic activity of the Ni oxide nanosheet edge that is not accessible by other methods.”

Prof. Zheng and his PhD student Mr. Cheng Hao, a visiting student at Xiamen University Malaysia in the year of 2018, contributed in performing the research using ab initio calculations. Prof. Zheng also worked jointly with Prof. Xin in preparing the manuscript.

This paper is available online:
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821091116