Stabilizing Pt Nanocrystals Encapsulated in N-Doped Carbon as Double-Active Sites for Catalyzing Oxygen Reduction Reaction.

Polypropylene fiber, a cheap source of nitrogen-doped carbon, is introduced to design robust nitrogen-doped carbon-encapsulated small Pt nanocrystals with Pt and nitrogen-carbon double-active centers toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Ascribed to the separation effect of the polypropylene fiber, even suffering from a high-temperature carbonization treatment at 720 °C for 90 min, the polypropylene fiber-derived carbon-encapsulated Pt nanocrystal maintains a small particle size (3 nm diameter on average). As expected, its ORR mass activity is up to 116.5 mA/mg at 0.9 V. After 8000 cycles, the half-wave potential of the prepared catalyst declines only by 14 mV compared with 43 mV for the commercial Pt/C catalyst. The significantly improved electrochemical properties of the as-prepared catalyst are resulted from the nitrogen-doped carbon-encapsulated Pt nanocrystal structure, which is benefited to adsorption and activation of oxygen due to the presence of nitrogen-doped carbon as the important active site for ORR besides Pt metal. In addition, the migration, aggregation, and growth of Pt nanoparticles are prohibited in terms of the outer nitrogen-doped carbon protection layer, greatly enhancing the stability of the catalyst.