The need for sustainable energy platforms drives nanocatalyst design and synthesis. In the case of fuel cells, Pt-based catalysts are common but suffer from high cost and poor durability. Typical routes to overcome the high cost and unfavorable surface-adsorbate interactions are to incorporate earth-abundant metals, either through a core@shell architecture or alloy formation; this addition decreases expensive metal loadings and tunes the surface-adsorbate interaction in accordance with the Sabatier principle. Here, the versatility of seed-mediated co-reduction (SMCR) is demonstrated with the deposition of PtM (where M = Ni, Co, Cu, or Fe) random alloyed shells on PdCu B2 intermetallic seeds, integrating the concepts of a core@shell architecture and alloyed surfaces into one nanostructure. Control of shell thickness and Pt:M ratios is demonstrated, providing a general route to strain-engineered alloyed surfaces. The performance of these nanocatalysts was evaluated for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) as a function of shell thickness and shell composition, where PtCu and PtNi shells showed the highest activity and outperformed PtCu and PtNi references. Significantly, this work demonstrates the versatility of SMCR as a facile way to control the many levers of catalyst design within one platform.

Building random alloy surfaces from intermetallic seeds as a general route to strain-engineered electrocatalysts

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.