Synthesizing Carbon‐Supported, High‐Loading, Ultra‐Small Pt₃Ni Nanoparticles via Tuning the Surface Electrostatic Effect

Abstract

Carbon‐supported nanoparticles (NPs) are widely used as catalysts in fuel cells and electrolyzers. While it is well known that NPs with smaller size and higher loading often lead to better catalytic activity, they remain challenging to synthesize due to the weak control over the surface properties of the support. Herein, a facile approach to synthesize carbon‐supported, high‐loading, and ultra‐small Pt3Ni NPs via applying thermal shock on strongly interacted carbon support with metal salt is reported. Specifically, sodium citrate is introduced into the precursor solution and substrate mixture, which induces strong electrostatic effect between metal salts and carbon particles that markedly improves precursor anchoring and dispersion, thereby achieving high particle loading as well as small size and distribution. As a proof‐of‐concept, the synthesis of Pt3Ni NPs supported on carbon black with particle size of 1.56 ± 0.36 nm at 30 wt% loading and 1.66 ± 0.56 nm at 40 wt% loading is reported, where the sizes are among the smallest while the loadings are among the highest in the literature. This approach can be readily extended to many compositions and substrates, with tunable particle size and loading, thereby substantially expanding the synthesis space for NP catalysts in various electrochemical applications.

PCTS‐Controlled Synthesis of L10/L12‐Typed Pt‐Mn Intermetallics for Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction

“…Sodium citrate in the system can lead to a strong electrostatic effect between metal salts and carbon substrate (Figure S14a, Supporting Information), thereby significantly improving precursor anchor and dispersion. [ 50 ] For comparison, the ordered L1 2 ‐Pt 3 Mn nanoparticles obtained without the addition of sodium citrate present an average particle size of about 15.85 nm (Figure S14b,c, Supporting Information), much larger than that PCTS‐induced L1 2 ‐Pt 3 Mn (4.48 nm) achieved with the sodium citrate modulation. As shown in Table S1.…”

One-Step Electrochemical Synthesis and Surface Reconstruction of NiCoP as an Electrocatalyst for Bifunctional Water Splitting

“…In terms of catalytic activity, the commercial market tends to prefer mature noble metal catalysts (Pt, Ir, and Ru), but their high cost, limited reserves, and easy aggregation characteristics urge the development of non-noble metal catalysts [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Transition-metal-based electrocatalysts have shown great potential for overall water splitting over the past few years.…”

Paper‐Based Lead Sulfide Quantum Dot Heterojunction Photodetectors

“…These materials are extremely dependent on high-quality single crystal substrates and high temperature and vacuum processes, which makes them costly and incompatible with flexible electronics. [6][7][8] Lead Sulfide quantum dots (PbS QDs) based photodetectors have developed rapidly in recent years due to their low-cost, tunable bandgap, mild fabrication process and high optical absorption coefficients. [9,10] DOI: 10.1002/admt.…”