Nitrogen doping to accelerate the phase transition to ordered intermetallic Pt3Co catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells

• Ordered intermetallic Pt–M alloys are foreseen to be promising as next-generation low-Pt catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) due to their high catalytic activity and stability. Nevertheless, the disorder-to-order intermetallic phase transition often needs to proceed at elevated annealing temperature for a long time, which leads to severe particle agglomeration. Herein, an efficient nitrogen (N)-doping strategy is developed to speed up such phase transition in an intermetallic Pt3Co alloy catalyst, which shortens the annealing duration by 3–5 fold at a temperature of 600–800 °C. Such a strategy can not only minimize the particle agglomeration but also effectively optimize the electronic structure of surface Pt atoms with the incorporated N. The prepared N-doped ordered intermetallic Pt3Co catalyst exhibits high ORR activity among the best of the state-of-the-art, with mass activities of 1.21 and 1.20 A mgPt−1 at 0.90 V in rotating disk electrode (RDE) and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) tests, respectively. Moreover, with the total Pt loading of 0.15 mgPt cm−2, the H2–air PEMFC delivers a power density of 1.27 W cm−2 at 150 kPaabs and 0.6 V, corresponding to a high Pt utilization of 0.118 gPt kW−1 that has surpassed the DOE 2025 target (0.125 gPt kW−1). This study paves a new way to develop high-performance low-Pt ORR catalysts for PEMFCs.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Kemi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Chemical Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Materialteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Materials Engineering (hsv//eng)

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ref (subject category)

art (subject category)