Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalyzed by Carbon-Supported Platinum Few-Atom Clusters: Significant Enhancement by Doping of Atomic Cobalt

Bingzhang Lu; Qiming Liu; Forrest Nichols; Rene Mercado; David Morris; Ning Li; Peng Zhang; Peng Gao; Yuan Ping; Shaowei Chen

doi:10.34133/2020/9167829

Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalyzed by Carbon-Supported Platinum Few-Atom Clusters: Significant Enhancement by Doping of Atomic Cobalt

Research (Wash D C). 2020 Nov 6:2020:9167829. doi: 10.34133/2020/9167829. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Bingzhang Lu¹, Qiming Liu¹, Forrest Nichols¹, Rene Mercado¹, David Morris², Ning Li^{3

4}, Peng Zhang², Peng Gao^{3

4

5}, Yuan Ping¹, Shaowei Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California 950564, USA.
² Department of Chemistry, Dalhousie University, 6274 Coburg Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2.
³ International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁴ Electron Microscopy Laboratory, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁵ Collaborative Innovation Centre of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China.

Abstract

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) plays an important role in dictating the performance of various electrochemical energy technologies. As platinum nanoparticles have served as the catalysts of choice towards ORR, minimizing the cost of the catalysts by diminishing the platinum nanoparticle size has become a critical route to advancing the technological development. Herein, first-principle calculations show that carbon-supported Pt₉ clusters represent the threshold domain size, and the ORR activity can be significantly improved by doping of adjacent cobalt atoms. This is confirmed experimentally, where platinum and cobalt are dispersed in nitrogen-doped carbon nanowires in varied forms, single atoms, few-atom clusters, and nanoparticles, depending on the initial feeds. The sample consisting primarily of Pt_2~7 clusters doped with atomic Co species exhibits the best mass activity among the series, with a current density of 4.16 A mg_Pt ^-1 at +0.85 V vs. RHE that is almost 50 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C.