Platinum stabilized by defective activated carbon with excellent oxygen reduction performance in alkaline media

Abstract

The exploration of highly active and durable cathodic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts with economical production cost is still the bottleneck to realize the large-scale commercialization of fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Given that carbon support is crucial to the electrocatalysts, and Pt is the best-known ORR catalyst so far, in this work, we employed a simple impregnation method for synthesizing a kind of defective activated carbon (D-AC) supported low Pt content electrocatalysts for the ORR. The reduction conditions of the Ptcontaining precursor were firstly optimized, and the influence of the Pt loading amount on the ORR was investigated as well. The results show that the obtained D-AC@5.0%Pt sample (contains 5 wt% Pt) has surpassed the commercial Pt/C with 20 wt% Pt for the ORR in an alkaline solution. In the meantime, it is more stable than the commercial Pt/C. The outstanding ORR performance of the D-AC@5.0%Pt confirms that both the unique defects in the D-AC and the introduced Pt particles are indispensable to the ORR. Particularly, the ORR activity of the synthesized catalysts is superior to most of the reported counterparts, but with much easier preparation methods and lower production cost, making them more advantageous in practical fuel cell applications.

Defects on carbons for electrocatalytic oxygen reduction

“…67,218 Besides the defects themselves could catalyze the electrochemical reactions (according to the proposed catalysis mechanism based on defect structures), defects are also capable of providing unique sites for trapping metallic species. 9,113,219 Due to the different structures and sizes of the defects, one or more metal atoms might be trapped into the specific defect site.…”

“…23). For example, defective activated carbon based catalysts, 9,63,219 seaweed derived carbon based materials, [226][227][228] and macadamia nut shell derived carbon based electrocatalysts. 26 The above research results addressed a very important issue that activated carbons can be highly active for electrocatalysis by applying the newly established defects promoted catalysis mechanism.…”

Effective construction of a B and N co-doped 3D porous carbon metal-free oxygen reduction reaction catalyst by a secondary pyrolysis strategy

“…[1][2][3] Noble metal Pt-based catalysts are state-of-the-art ORR catalysts with low overpotential and high catalytic activities, which, meanwhile, also suffer from scarce earth reserves, high cost, poor stability, and low resistance to poisoning. [4][5][6][7][8][9] Therefore, developing efficient, durable, and economical ORR electrocatalysts to replace noble metal-based catalysts has drawn worldwide attention.…”

Phthalocyanine-induced iron active species in metal–organic framework-derived porous carbon for efficient alkaline zinc–air batteries

“…[6][7][8][9][10][11] Although platinum-related nanomaterials have long been recognized as the best catalysts, their low durability and high price severely hinder their further development and wide commercialization. 12,13 Therefore, the development of cheap, robust and high-performance nonnoble metal-based substitutes has become one of the research hotspots in the scientific community.…”