Designing Robust Support for Pt Alloy Nanoframes with Durable Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity

Zhifu Wu; Dai Dang; Xinlong Tian

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b21459

Designing Robust Support for Pt Alloy Nanoframes with Durable Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Mar 6;11(9):9117-9124. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b21459. Epub 2019 Feb 20.

Authors

Zhifu Wu^{1

2}, Dai Dang³, Xinlong Tian⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering , Baise University , Baise , Guangxi 533000 , China.
² College of Materials Science and Engineering , Guilin University of Technology , Guilin , Guangxi 532100 , China.
³ School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry , Guangdong University of Technology , Guangzhou , Guangdong 510006 , China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage (Ministry of Education), Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) , Wuhan 430074 , China.

PMID: 30735033
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b21459

Abstract

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells are appealing to resolve the environmental and energy issues but are still heavily inhibited by the dilemma of fabricating effective and durable electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). In this work, highly open Pt₃Cu nanoframes and one-dimensional, hollow titanium nitride architectures are both successfully explored and implemented as the new system to replace the traditional Pt-carbon motif. The ORR performance of the obtained electrocatalyst shows specific and mass activities of 5.32 mA cm^-2 and 2.43 A mg_Pt^-1, respectively, which are 14.4 and 11.6 times higher than those of the commercial Pt/C. Notably, the novel catalyst also exhibits high stability and a much slower performance degradation than that of the benchmarked Pt₃Cu/C with the same durability testing procedures. The comprehensive data confirm that the new type of catalyst possesses a high charge transfer during the ORR process, and the unique structure and synergistic effects between anchored Pt and the support mainly contributes to the high stability. This work provides a strategic method for designing an effective ORR electrocatalyst with desirable stability.

Keywords: low platinum catalyst; nanoframes; oxygen reduction reaction; robust support; transition-metal nitrides.