Universal Catalyst Design Framework for Electrochemical Hydrogen Peroxide Synthesis Facilitated by Local Atomic Environment Descriptors

Abstract

Abstract A universal design framework for high‐performance catalysts remains challenging due to diverse structures and active sites. We developed a framework integrating weighted atom‐centered symmetry function (wACSF) descriptors with machine learning, microkinetic modeling, and high‐throughput screening. The wACSF descriptors unify geometric and chemical characteristics of active sites across different catalyst families. ML models trained on wACSF accurately predicted adsorption free energies of hydroxyl (ΔG OH * , R 2 = 0.84) and oxygen (ΔG O* , R 2 = 0.91) for intermetallic alloys, metal oxides, perovskites, and single‐atom catalysts in the two‐electron water oxidation reaction (2e − WOR). Density functional theory and microkinetic modeling yielded a universal 2e − WOR volcano model that agreed well with experiments. High‐throughput screening with ML‐predicted ΔG OH* identified LiScO 2 , which achieved 90% H 2 O 2 Faradaic efficiency at 2.2 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) with 168‐hour stability (82%–86% retention). Experimental activity (log( j ) = 1.56) matched theoretical predictions (log( j ) = 1.28) within 5% deviation at 2.4 V_RHE. This universal framework provides a general paradigm for rational catalyst design and is implemented in the Digital Catalysis Platform ( DigCat ), enabling efficient discovery across diverse material classes and electrochemical reactions.