Amorphous atomically thin metals offer an exceptionally high density of catalytically active sites, yet their practical electrocatalytic performance is often constrained by kinetic limitations arising from inefficient charge transport and restricted mass exchange within disordered ultrathin domains. This mismatch between local surface reactivity and macroscopic reaction kinetics represents a fundamental barrier to fully exploiting amorphous metallic catalysts. Here, we report a hierarchically integrated amorphous PtCu architecture in which atomically thin PtCu nanosheets and interconnected PtCu nanotubes are spatially interwoven to establish distinct yet strongly coupled reaction and transport domains. Within this architecture, the amorphous nanosheets function as highly active catalytic interfaces, while the contiguous nanotube network provides a continuous transport backbone that enables rapid electron percolation and efficient reactant diffusion. This deliberate functional partitioning effectively decouples surface reactivity from transport constraints, thereby alleviating the intrinsic kinetic bottlenecks of amorphous two-dimensional metals. As a consequence, the PtCu nanotube-nanosheet hybrid delivers markedly enhanced hydrogen evolution kinetics and Pt utilization efficiency, surpassing most reported Pt-based electrocatalysts. More broadly, this work demonstrates that transport-enabled structural integration can fundamentally reshape the electrocatalytic behavior of amorphous metals, establishing a transferable structural design strategy for converting atomic-scale disorder into macroscopic catalytic efficiency.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.