Boosting HER Performance of Pt-Based Catalysts Immobilized on Functionalized Vulcan Carbon by Atomic Layer Deposition

Wei Luo,Jie Gan,Wenyao Chen,Xuezhi Duan,Xinggui Zhou,Gang Qian,Zikun Huang

doi:10.3389/fmats.2019.00251

Abstract

Development of cost-effective Pt-based electrocatalysts is of scientific and industrial importance for hydrogen evolution from water splitting. In this work, cost-efficient Pt-based catalysts, immobilized on functionalized Vulcan Carbon (VC) from hydrothermal treatment of Ru precursor and ethylene glycol solution, for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are elaborately constructed via an elegant and controllable atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. More carboxyl groups on the functionalized VC are suggested as the anchor sites for Pt immobilization, which gives rise to the more Pt active sites, desirable Pt electronic properties and stronger Pt-support interaction. The resultant 7.1 wt% Pt-based composite catalyst exhibits remarkably boosted HER activity and stability than the commercial 20 % Pt/C catalyst. These insights could open up a new avenue for fabrication of cost-effective Pt/C HER catalysts based on ALD technique.

Highlights

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water splitting has been recently identified as an economical and sustainable method for H2 production (Li et al, 2011; Shi and Zhang, 2016; Lyu et al, 2017; Ouyang et al, 2017; Seh et al, 2017)
The average metal particle sizes based on the measurements of more than 200 random particles were determined to be 1.5 ± 0.4, 1.6 ± 0.1, and 1.7 ± 0.3 nm for the Pt/Ru/Vulcan Carbon (VC), Pt/VC, and Ru/VC catalysts, respectively
The Ru/VC catalyst exhibits the overpotential of 127 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and 163 mV at 40 mA cm−2. These results demonstrate the outstanding HER activity of our developed Pt/Ru/VC composite catalyst

Summary

Introduction

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water splitting has been recently identified as an economical and sustainable method for H2 production (Li et al, 2011; Shi and Zhang, 2016; Lyu et al, 2017; Ouyang et al, 2017; Seh et al, 2017). Pt-Based HER Catalyst the size of Pt nanoparticles (George, 2009; Gao and Qin, 2017) For such technique, it proceeds via the self-limiting surface reactions, i.e., the precursor reacting with the surface functional groups on the substrate. It proceeds via the self-limiting surface reactions, i.e., the precursor reacting with the surface functional groups on the substrate To this end, there are an amount of studies about the surface treatments to introduce more surface functional groups for anchoring the Pt species and the increased cycles to obtain relatively high Pt loading, but to cause the loss of the Pt active sites because of the increased Pt particle size (Liu et al, 2009; Li et al, 2010; Zhang et al, 2017). More studies are highly desirable to gain in-depth understanding of ALD-synthesized Pt/C catalyzed HER and rationally design costeffective and stable Pt/C HER electrocatalysts

Results

Discussion

Conclusion