journal article·2020-11Open access

Eliminating dissolution of platinum-based electrocatalysts at the atomic scale

Pietro P. Lopes, Dongguo Li, Haifeng Lv, Chao Wang, Dusan Tripkovic, Yisi Zhu, Roberto Schimmenti, Hideo Daimon, Yijin Kang, Joshua Snyder, Nigel Becknell, Karren L. More, Dusan Strmcnik, Nenad M. Markovic, Manos Mavrikakis, Vojislav R. Stamenkovic

Nature Materials· Volume 19· Issue 11

Abstract

A remaining challenge for the deployment of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells is the limited durability of platinum (Pt) nanoscale materials that operate at high voltages during the cathodic oxygen reduction reaction. In this work, atomic-scale insight into well-defined single-crystalline, thin-film and nanoscale surfaces exposed Pt dissolution trends that governed the design and synthesis of durable materials. A newly defined metric, intrinsic dissolution, is essential to understanding the correlation between the measured Pt loss, surface structure, size and ratio of Pt nanoparticles in a carbon (C) support. It was found that the utilization of a gold (Au) underlayer promotes ordering of Pt surface atoms towards a (111) structure, whereas Au on the surface selectively protects low-coordinated Pt sites. This mitigation strategy was applied towards 3 nm Pt3Au/C nanoparticles and resulted in the elimination of Pt dissolution in the liquid electrolyte, which included a 30-fold durability improvement versus 3 nm Pt/C over an extended potential range up to 1.2 V.
Source: europepmc · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion · Fuel Cells and Related Materials · Advanced battery technologies research

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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