Sub-3 nm Intermetallic Ordered Pt3In Clusters for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Qi Wang; Zhi Liang Zhao; Zhe Zhang; Tianli Feng; Ruyi Zhong; Hu Xu; Sokrates T Pantelides; Meng Gu

doi:10.1002/advs.201901279

Sub-3 nm Intermetallic Ordered Pt₃In Clusters for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2019 Nov 18;7(2):1901279. doi: 10.1002/advs.201901279. eCollection 2020 Jan.

Authors

Qi Wang^{1

2}, Zhi Liang Zhao¹, Zhe Zhang³, Tianli Feng⁴, Ruyi Zhong¹, Hu Xu³, Sokrates T Pantelides⁴, Meng Gu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen 518055 China.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 P. R. China.
³ Department of Physics Southern University of Science and Technology Shenzhen 518055 China.
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vanderbilt University Nashville TN 37235 USA.

Abstract

Industrial applications of Pt-based oxygen-reduction-reaction (ORR) catalysts are limited by high cost and low stability. Here, facile large-scale synthesis of sub-3-nm ordered Pt₃In clusters on commercial carbon black as ORR catalyst that alleviates both these shortcomings is reported. As-prepared Pt₃In/C exhibits a mass activity of 0.71 mA mg^-1 and a specific area activity of 0.91 mA cm^-2 at 0.9 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode, which are 4.1 and 2.7 times the corresponding values of commercial Pt/C catalysts. The as-prepared ordered Pt₃In/C catalyst is also remarkably stable with negligible activity and structural decay after 20 000 accelerated electrochemical durability cycles, due to its ordered structure. Density-functional-theory calculations demonstrate that ordered-Pt₃In is more energetically favorable for ORR than the commercial Pt/C catalysts because ∆G _O is closer to the peak of the volcano plot after ordered incorporation of indium atoms.

Keywords: intermetallic ordered Pt3In; large‐scale; oxygen reduction reaction; sub‐3 nm clusters; theoretically minimum size.