Zooming‐in – Visualization of active site heterogeneity in high entropy alloy electrocatalysts using scanning electrochemical cell microscopy

Abstract Complex solid solutions (“high entropy alloys” with a single solid‐solution phase) hold great promise in electrocatalysis because of their nearly unlimited number of different active sites exposed at the surface. It has been shown by theoretical studies that multiple arrangements of different elements directly neighboring a binding site create millions of differently active catalytic sites. We report a zooming‐in approach using scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) to distinguish between the averaged electrochemical response of multiple active sites and active site‐specific electrochemical response. Using a thin film complex solid solution electrocatalyst and a range of SECCM single barrel capillaries with diameters from 1.2 µm to 50 nm, we observed an averaged electrochemical response for the oxygen reduction reaction with minor statistical variations for the larger capillary diameters. In contrast, significant statistical heterogeneity among the measured spots is observed for small capillary diameters. This statistical heterogeneity is attributed to the ability of the smaller probe size to address a comparatively smaller number of active sites with high or low activity dominating the measured electrocatalytic currents.