The development of efficient catalysts with low energy consumption has always been a key issue for sustainable hydrogen energy. Here, we report a catalyst comprising a single atomic Pd layer deposited on Au nanorods (ML-Pd@Au NRs) that shows a super-high HER activity and ultra-low overpotential under localized surface plasmon resonance condition. The Au NR plays triple determining roles in HER performance via adjusting the electronic structure and lattice strain of Pd that effectively reduces the adsorption energy of H-adatoms, eliminating the penetration of H adatoms in multilayer Pd crystal that decreases the H adatoms diffusion kinetics, and providing high energetic hot charge carriers under near-IR light irradiation that decreases the activation energy and onset potential of HER. The single atomic Pd layer on Au NRs ensures the hot electron transfer as the main dissipation pathway of the plasmonic hot charge carriers for HER. Thus, under near-IR light irradiation, HER on ML-Pd@Au NRs occurs with a high mass activity of 17.47 mA mg⁻¹ at 100 mV and a very low overpotential of 13 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², which are superior to the commercial Pd/C and commercial Pt/C catalysts under the same conditions.

开发低能耗高效催化剂一直是氢能可持续发展的关键问题。在这里，我们报告了一种包含沉积在 Au 纳米棒上的单原子 Pd 层 (ML-Pd@Au NRs) 的催化剂，该催化剂在局域表面等离子体共振条件下显示出超高的 HER 活性和超低的过电势。Au NR 通过调整 Pd 的电子结构和晶格应变有效降低 H-吸附原子的吸附能，消除 H 吸附原子在多层 Pd 晶体中的渗透，从而降低 H 吸附原子扩散动力学，以及在近红外光照射下提供高能热载流子，降低 HER 的活化能和起始电位。Au NRs 上的单原子 Pd 层确保热电子转移作为 HER 等离子体热载流子的主要耗散途径。因此，在近红外光照射下，ML-Pd@Au NRs 上的 HER 具有 17.47 mA mg 的高质量活性^-1在 100 mV 和在 10 mA cm ^-2时为 13 mV 的非常低的过电势，这在相同条件下优于商业 Pd/C 和商业 Pt/C 催化剂。