Atomic Carbon Layers Supported Pt Nanoparticles for Minimized CO Poisoning and Maximized Methanol Oxidation

Gailing Bai; Chang Liu; Zhe Gao; Baoying Lu; Xili Tong; Xiangyun Guo; Nianjun Yang

doi:10.1002/smll.201902951

Atomic Carbon Layers Supported Pt Nanoparticles for Minimized CO Poisoning and Maximized Methanol Oxidation

Small. 2019 Sep;15(38):e1902951. doi: 10.1002/smll.201902951. Epub 2019 Jul 28.

Authors

Gailing Bai^{1

2

3}, Chang Liu^{1

2}, Zhe Gao¹, Baoying Lu⁴, Xili Tong¹, Xiangyun Guo^{1

5}, Nianjun Yang⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan, 030001, China.
² Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ Department of Materials Engineering, Taiyuan Institute of Technology, Taiyuan, 030008, China.
⁴ Guangxi University of Science and Technology, Liuzhou, 545000, China.
⁵ School of Petrochemical Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, China.
⁶ Institute of Materials Engineering, University of Siegen, Siegen, 57076, Germany.

PMID: 31353799
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201902951

Abstract

Maximizing activity of Pt catalysts toward methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) together with minimized poisoning of adsorbed CO during MOR still remains a big challenge. In the present work, uniform and well-distributed Pt nanoparticles (NPs) grown on an atomic carbon layer, that is in situ formed by means of dry-etching of silicon carbide nanoparticles (SiC NPs) with CCl₄ gas, are explored as potential catalysts for MOR. Significantly, as-synthesized catalysts exhibit remarkably higher MOR catalytic activity (e.g., 647.63 mA mg^-1 at a peak potential of 0.85 V vs RHE) and much improved anti-CO poisoning ability than the commercial Pt/C catalysts, Pt/carbon nanotubes, and Pt/graphene catalysts. Moreover, the amount of expensive Pt is a few times lower than that of the commercial and reported catalyst systems. As confirmed from density functional theory (DFT) calculations and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) measurements, such high performance is due to reduced adsorption energy of CO on the Pt NPs and an increased amount of adsorbed energy OH species that remove adsorbed CO fast and efficiently. Therefore, these catalysts can be utilized for the development of large-scale and industry-orientated direct methanol fuel cells.

Keywords: CO poisoning; Pt catalysts; atomic carbon layer; electrochemical methanol oxidation; silicon carbide.

Abstract

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