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Synthesis of Platinum-nickel Nanowires and Optimization for Oxygen Reduction Performance
Published on: April 27, 2018
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Composition tunable ternary Pt-Ni-Co octahedra for optimized oxygen reduction activity
Zipeng Zhao1, Miao Feng2, Jihan Zhou3
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. yhuang@seas.ucla.edu.
Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England)
|October 11, 2016
Summary
Researchers developed a one-step method for creating octahedral platinum-nickel-cobalt (Pt-Ni-Co) catalysts. Optimized Pt-Ni-Co/C catalysts show significantly enhanced oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity compared to commercial platinum/carbon (Pt/C).
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Electrochemistry
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Developing efficient electrocatalysts is crucial for advancing clean energy technologies, particularly fuel cells.
- Platinum-based alloys are promising for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysis, but enhancing their activity and reducing platinum content remain key challenges.
- Ternary alloys offer opportunities to tune electronic properties and improve catalytic performance over binary systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To report a novel one-step synthesis method for producing octahedral platinum-nickel-cobalt (Pt-Ni-Co) ternary catalysts.
- To investigate the effect of composition on the catalytic activity of these ternary catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR).
- To compare the performance of the optimized Pt-Ni-Co/C catalyst against commercial Pt/C catalysts.
Main Methods:
- A one-step synthesis approach was employed to create octahedral Pt-Ni-Co ternary nanocrystals.
- The composition of the Pt-Ni-Co catalysts was systematically tuned.
- Electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) was evaluated using rotating disk electrode (RDE) voltammetry.
- Specific activity and mass activity were calculated and compared to commercial Pt/C.
Main Results:
- The synthesis method successfully produced octahedral Pt-Ni-Co ternary catalysts with tunable compositions and fixed shapes.
- The composition-optimized octahedral PtNi0.55Co0.1/C catalyst exhibited significantly enhanced ORR activity.
- Specific activity (5.05 mA cm-2) and mass activity (2.80 mA μgPt-1) were approximately 20.2 and 14.7 times higher, respectively, than commercial Pt/C.
- The results demonstrate a substantial improvement over previously reported Pt-Ni-Co alloy octahedra.
Conclusions:
- A facile one-step synthesis method for tunable octahedral Pt-Ni-Co ternary catalysts has been established.
- The optimized Pt-Ni-Co/C catalyst shows superior ORR electrocatalytic performance compared to commercial Pt/C.
- These findings highlight the potential of ternary Pt-Ni-Co alloys as highly active and efficient electrocatalysts for ORR applications.
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