Strain Engineering to Enhance the Electrooxidation Performance of Atomic-Layer Pt on Intermetallic Pt3Ga

Quanchen Feng; Shu Zhao; Dongsheng He; Shubo Tian; Lin Gu; Xiaodong Wen; Chen Chen; Qing Peng; Dingsheng Wang; Yadong Li

doi:10.1021/jacs.7b13612

Strain Engineering to Enhance the Electrooxidation Performance of Atomic-Layer Pt on Intermetallic Pt₃Ga

J Am Chem Soc. 2018 Feb 28;140(8):2773-2776. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b13612. Epub 2018 Feb 16.

Authors

Quanchen Feng¹, Shu Zhao², Dongsheng He³, Shubo Tian¹, Lin Gu⁴, Xiaodong Wen⁵, Chen Chen¹, Qing Peng¹, Dingsheng Wang¹, Yadong Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
² Beijing Guyue New Materials Research Institute, Beijing University of Technology , Beijing 100124, China.
³ Materials Characterization and Preparation Center, South University of Science and Technology of China , Shenzhen 518055, China.
⁴ Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Taiyuan 030001, China.

PMID: 29432012
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b13612

Abstract

Strain engineering has been a powerful strategy to finely tune the catalytic properties of materials. We report a tensile-strained two-to-three atomic-layer Pt on intermetallic Pt₃Ga (AL-Pt/Pt₃Ga) as an active electrocatalyst for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). Atomic-resolution high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy characterization showed that the AL-Pt possessed a 3.2% tensile strain along the [001] direction while having a negligible strain along the [100]/[010] direction. For MOR, this tensile-strained AL-Pt electrocatalyst showed obviously higher specific activity (7.195 mA cm^-2) and mass activity (1.094 mA/μg_Pt) than those of its unstrained counterpart and commercial Pt/C catalysts. Density functional theory calculations demonstrated that the tensile-strained surface was more energetically favorable for MOR than the unstrained one, and the stronger binding of OH* on stretched AL-Pt enabled the easier removal of CO*.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't