Beyond Strain and Ligand Effects: Microstrain-Induced Enhancement of the Oxygen Reduction Reaction Kinetics on Various PtNi/C Nanostructures

By Raphaël Chattot, T. Asset, P. Bordet, J. Drnec, L. Dubau, F. Maillard. 2017

152 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The electrical performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell is limited by the slow oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics. Catalytic improvements for the ORR have been obtained on alloyed PtM/C or M-rich-core@Pt-rich-shell/C catalysts (where M is an early or late transition metal) in comparison to pure Pt/C, due to a combination of strain and ligand effects. However, the effect of the fine nanostructure of the nanomaterials on the ORR kinetics remains underinvestigated. Here, nanometer-sized PtNi/C electrocatalysts with low Ni content (∼15 atom %) but different nanostructures and different densities of grain boundary were synthesized: solid, hollow, or “sea sponge” PtNi/C nanoalloys, and solid Ni-core@Pt-shell/C nanoparticles. These nanostructures were characterized by transmission and scanning transmission electron microscopy, X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy, synchrotron wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), atomic absorption spectroscopy, and electrochemical techniques. Their electrocatalyti...

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electrochemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2a00a0bf6516aa23856bd7928ca82c6aa8d40b1d