Facile and large-scale preparation of materials with uniform distributions of ultrafine particles for catalysis is a challenging task, and it is even more difficult to obtain catalysts that excel in both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and hydrogenation, which are the corresponding merging and splitting procedures of hydrogen, respectively. Herein, the fabrication of ultrafine bimetallic PtNi nanoparticles embedded in carbon nanosheets (CNS) by means of in situ self-polymerization and annealing is reported. This bifunctional catalyst shows excellent performance in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the hydrogenation of p-nitrophenol. Remarkably PtNi bimetallic catalyst with low metal loading (PtNi2 @CNS-600, 0.074 wt % Pt) exhibited outstanding HER activity with an overpotential as low as 68 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 with a platinum loading of only 0.612 μgPt cm-2 and Tafel slope of 35.27 mV dec-1 in a 0.5 m aqueous solution of H2 SO4 , which is comparable to that of the 20 % Pt/C catalyst (31 mV dec-1 ). Moreover, it also shows superior long-term electrochemical durability for at least 30 h with negligible degradation compared with 20 % Pt/C. In addition, the material with increased loading (mPtNi2 @CNS-600, 2.88 % Pt) showed robust catalytic activity for hydrogenation of p-nitrophenol at ambient pressure and temperature. The catalytic activity towards hydrogen splitting is a circumstantial evidence that agrees with the Volmer-Tafel reaction path in the HER.
Keywords: carbon; electrochemistry; hydrogenation; nanoparticles; nanostructures.
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