Wang Mengnan, Zhang Jiaguang, Favero Silvia, Higgins Luke J R, Luo Hui, Stephens Ifan E L, Titirici Maria-Magdalena
Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
Department of Materials, Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2BP, UK.
Nat Commun. 2024 Oct 30;15(1):9390. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-53823-z.
To bridge the gap between oxygen reduction electrocatalysts development and their implementation in real proton exchange membrane fuel cell electrodes, an important aspect to be understood is the interaction between the carbon support, the active sites, and the proton conductive ionomer as it greatly affects the local transportations to the catalyst surface. Here we show that three Pt/C catalysts, synthesized using the polyol method with different carbon supports (low surface area Vulcan, high surface area Ketjenblack, and biomass-derived highly ordered mesoporous carbon), revealed significant variations in ionomer-catalyst interactions. The Pt/C catalysts supported on ordered mesoporous carbon derived from biomass showed the best performance under the gas diffusion electrode configuration. Through a unique approach of operando X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy combined with gas sorption analysis, we were able to demonstrate the beneficial effect of mesopore presence for optimal ionomer-catalyst interaction at both molecular and structural level.
为了弥合氧还原电催化剂开发与其实现在实际质子交换膜燃料电池电极之间的差距，需要理解的一个重要方面是碳载体、活性位点和质子传导离聚物之间的相互作用，因为它极大地影响了向催化剂表面的局部传输。在这里，我们展示了三种使用多元醇法合成的、具有不同碳载体（低比表面积的Vulcan、高比表面积的科琴黑和生物质衍生的高度有序介孔碳）的Pt/C催化剂，在离聚物 - 催化剂相互作用方面表现出显著差异。负载在生物质衍生的有序介孔碳上的Pt/C催化剂在气体扩散电极配置下表现出最佳性能。通过将原位X射线吸收光谱与气体吸附分析相结合的独特方法，我们能够在分子和结构层面证明介孔的存在对优化离聚物 - 催化剂相互作用的有益效果。
