Monodispersed bimetallic platinum-copper alloy nanospheres as efficient catalysts for ethylene glycol electrooxidation

Chunyan Chen; Liujun Jin; Hongyuan Shang; Tongxin Song; Fei Gao; Yangping Zhang; Caiqin Wang; Cheng Wang; Yukou Du

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.097

Monodispersed bimetallic platinum-copper alloy nanospheres as efficient catalysts for ethylene glycol electrooxidation

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Sep 1:551:81-88. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.097. Epub 2019 May 2.

Authors

Chunyan Chen¹, Liujun Jin¹, Hongyuan Shang¹, Tongxin Song¹, Fei Gao¹, Yangping Zhang¹, Caiqin Wang², Cheng Wang¹, Yukou Du³

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, PR China.
² College of Science & Institute of Materials Physics and Chemistry, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, PR China. Electronic address: caiqin.wang@utoronto.ca.
³ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, PR China. Electronic address: duyk@suda.edu.cn.

PMID: 31075636
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.097

Abstract

Designing and fabricating highly active and efficient catalysts are of vital importance for the practical applications of direct ethylene glycol fuel cells (DEGFCs). In this study, we employ a feasible one-pot synthetic method to construct highly monodispersed PtCu nanospheres (NSs) as high-efficiency anode electrocatalysts for DEGFCs. Interestingly, the optimized carbon supported Pt₁Cu₁ NSs can display the highest mass activity of 2146.9 mA mg^-1 in 1 M KOH + 1 M EG solution under the scan rate of 50 mV s^-1, which is 1.9 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C catalysts. This is ascribed to the favorable electronic effect between Pt and Cu, which is beneficial for ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR) in fuel cells. Meanwhile, such monodispersed Pt₁Cu₁ NSs can also exhibit excellent durability, where the Pt₁Cu₁ catalyst retains 62.6% of the initial value after the cyclic voltammetry of 500 cycles. This work not only provides a significant approach for designing catalysts for fuel cells, but also constructs a novel class of active and stable electrocatalysts for EGOR.

Keywords: Electrocatalysts; Ethylene glycol electrooxidation; High activity; Monodispersed PtCu NSs.