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Published on: July 28, 2020
Atomic-Level Construction of Tensile-Strained PdFe Alloy Surface toward Highly Efficient Oxygen Reduction
Xu Li1, Xingxing Li1, Chunxiao Liu1
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Surface and Interface Chemistry and Energy Catalysis of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, Department of Chemical Physics , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei , Anhui 230026 , P.R. China.
Abstract:
Exploring the high-performance non-Pt electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), the bottleneck process in fuel cells, is desirable but challenging. Here, we report the Pd@PdFe core-shell icosahedra as an active and durable electrocatalyst toward ORR in alkaline conditions, which feature a three-atomic-layer tensile-strained PdFe overlayer on Pd icosahedra. Our optimized catalyst shows 2.8-fold enhancement in mass activity and 6.9-fold enhancement in specific activity than commercial Pt/C catalyst toward ORR, representing one of the best non-Pt electrocatalysts. Moreover, the boosted ORR catalysis is strongly supported by the assembled fuel cell performance using Pd@PdFe core-shell icosahedra as the cathode electrocatalyst. The density functional theory calculations reveal that the synergistic coupling of tensile strain and alloy effects enables the optimum binding strength for intermediates, thus causing the maximum activity. The present work suggests the coupling between multiple surface modulations endows larger room for the rational design of remarkable catalysts.
