Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA.
Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 25;10(1):440. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-08323-w.
Advanced electrocatalysts with low platinum content, high activity and durability for the oxygen reduction reaction can benefit the widespread commercial use of fuel cell technology. Here, we report a platinum-trimer decorated cobalt-palladium core-shell nanocatalyst with a low platinum loading of only 2.4 wt% for the use in alkaline fuel cell cathodes. This ternary catalyst shows a mass activity that is enhanced by a factor of 30.6 relative to a commercial platinum catalyst, which is attributed to the unique charge localization induced by platinum-trimer decoration. The high stability of the decorated trimers endows the catalyst with an outstanding durability, maintaining decent electrocatalytic activity with no degradation for more than 322,000 potential cycles in alkaline electrolyte. These findings are expected to be useful for surface engineering and design of advanced fuel cell catalysts with atomic-scale platinum decoration.
具有低铂含量、高活性和耐久性的先进电催化剂可促进燃料电池技术的广泛商业应用。在这里，我们报告了一种负载量仅为 2.4wt%的铂三聚体修饰的钴钯核壳纳米催化剂，可用于碱性燃料电池阴极。与商业铂催化剂相比，这种三元催化剂的质量活性提高了 30.6 倍，这归因于铂三聚体修饰所诱导的独特电荷定位。修饰三聚体的高稳定性赋予了催化剂出色的耐久性，在碱性电解质中超过 322,000 个电势循环中保持着良好的电催化活性，没有降解。这些发现有望为先进燃料电池催化剂的原子级铂修饰的表面工程和设计提供有用的信息。
