A first-principles elucidation is provided for a reason why platinum shows excellent catalysis concerning the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The present research is based on an intensive simulation of the ORR pathways performed under realistic electric double layer conditions and on a multidimensional thermodynamic analysis that directly takes into account the multistep character of ORR. The ORR on four noble metals (Pt, Pd, Ru, and Au) can be characterized by three processes, O 2 reduction to OOH, bond breakage between O atoms, and avoidance of OH and O poisons. We show that thermodynamic analysis of these processes yields a Sabatier volcano plot.
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Okamoto et al. (2010) studied this question.