Platinum atomic clusters embedded in polyoxometalates-carbon black as an efficient and durable catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Tongrui Zhang; Suting Weng; Xuefeng Wang; Zhijun Zhang; Yaling Gao; Ting Lin; Yuanqin Zhu; Wei Zhang; Chunwen Sun

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.06.018

Platinum atomic clusters embedded in polyoxometalates-carbon black as an efficient and durable catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Oct 15:624:704-712. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.06.018. Epub 2022 Jun 7.

Authors

Tongrui Zhang¹, Suting Weng², Xuefeng Wang³, Zhijun Zhang⁴, Yaling Gao⁴, Ting Lin², Yuanqin Zhu⁵, Wei Zhang⁶, Chunwen Sun⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China; School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi 530004, China.
² Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Tianmu Lake Institute of Advanced Energy Storage Technologies Co. Ltd., Liyang 213300, Jiangsu, China.
⁴ School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi 530004, China.
⁶ Institute for Energy Research, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212013, China. Electronic address: wzhang@ujs.edu.cn.
⁷ School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China; School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi 530004, China. Electronic address: csun@cumtb.edu.cn.

PMID: 35696788
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.06.018

Abstract

Platinum-based catalysts are regarded as the Holy Grail of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). As a benchmark catalyst for HER, the commercial Pt/C catalyst has low Pt utilization efficiency and high cost, which hinders its commercialization. Atomic clusters-based catalysts show high efficiency of atom utilization and high performance toward electrocatalysis. Herein, an environmentally friendly preparation strategy is proposed to construct Pt atomic clusters on the polyoxometalates-carbon black (Pt-POMs-CB) support. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the Pt clusters can be stably anchored on the surface with the driving force arising from the charge transfer from Pt atoms to O atoms of the POMs. Benefiting from metal-support interaction, Pt atomic clusters embedded in silicotungstic acid-carbon black (Pt-STA-CB) exhibit excellent HER activity with an overpotential of 33.8 mV at 10 mA cm^-2, and high mass activity is 1.62 A mg^-1_Pt at 33.8 mV, which is 5.4 times that of the commercial Pt/C. In addition, the catalyst displays high stability of 800 h at current density of 500 mA cm^-2. It provides a platform for facile and low-cost preparation of stable Pt-based catalysts, which is crucial for their large-scale production and practical application in the industry.

Keywords: Hydrogen evolution reaction; Large-scale production; Metal-support interaction; Pt atomic clusters.