Recently, the team led by Professor Wei Shizhong from Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, in collaboration with Professor Liu Jian from Inner Mongolia University, published a high-level research paper titled "Rare Earth Single Atoms Steering Hydrogen Spillover over Pd/WO3 toward High-Efficiency Near Room Temperature H2 Sensor" in Advanced Energy Materials (Impact Factor 24.4), an international top-tier journal in the field of materials science. Professor Wei Shizhong, Associate Professor Gong Feilong, and Dr. Song Min are co-corresponding authors, doctoral student Wei Zexin from the College of Material and Chemical Engineering is the first author, and Zhengzhou University of Light Industry is the first affiliated institution.

As a clean and efficient energy carrier, hydrogen plays a crucial role in helping achieve the "dual carbon" goals. The high explosiveness of hydrogen poses severe challenges for its safe monitoring. Addressing the issues of low sensitivity and slow response of semiconductor gas sensors under room temperature conditions, the team precisely regulated the work function difference between Pd nanoparticles and WO₃ support, as well as the oxygen vacancy concentration in the support, using rare earth single atoms. This efficiently optimized the migration and desorption process of hydrogen from Pd to WO₃, achieving high-efficiency detection of trace hydrogen at near room temperature. Theoretical calculations show that the work function difference and oxygen vacancy formation energy increase with the number of 4f orbital electrons. The Ce-Pd/WO₃ sensor, which has the lowest work function difference and oxygen vacancy formation energy, exhibits the lowest hydrogen migration and desorption energy barriers. The gas sensor fabricated from Ce-Pd/WO₃ demonstrates a response value as high as 31.3 to 50 ppm hydrogen at 40 °C, with a detection limit as low as 113 ppb, and response and recovery times of only 3 seconds and 15 seconds, respectively, far exceeding currently reported hydrogen sensing performance. Furthermore, this gas sensor was successfully applied to real-time safety monitoring of trace hydrogen leakage (0.1 v/v%) from aluminum-air batteries.

Advanced Energy Materials is a well-known high-level journal in the field of energy materials. This research was funded and supported by the Key Programs of the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and other projects.

Journal article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202501365