Interfacial Cladding Engineering Suppresses Atomic Thermal Migration to Fabricate Well‐Defined Dual‐Atom Electrocatalysts

Abstract As an emerging frontier, dual‐atom catalysts (DACs) have sparked broad interest in energy catalysis, however the undesired thermal atomic migration during synthesis process pose significant challenge in enabling further applications. Herein, an interfacial cladding strategy is reported to construct monodispersed dual‐atom metal sites (metal = Fe, Cu, or Ir), derived from metal dimer molecule functionalized metal‐organic frameworks. First, metal dimer molecule is immobilized at the surface of cubic ZIF‐8 by the interfacial cladding of polydopamine, thus preventing the potentially thermal migration of metal atoms during pyrolysis. Then, the paired metal atoms are anchored onto a hollow carbon nanocage and achieve nitrogen coordinated dual‐atom metal sites after annealing at 900 °C. Representatively, the resultant dual Fe catalysts exhibit remarkable activity for electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction with half‐wave potential of 0.951 and 0.816 V in alkaline and acidic media, respectively. The findings open up an avenue for the rational design of dual‐atom catalysts.