Issue 11, 2021

Lanthanide electronic perturbation in Pt–Ln (La, Ce, Pr and Nd) alloys for enhanced methanol oxidation reaction activity

Abstract

Simultaneously achieving high activity and robust stability is still challenging for direct methanol fuel cells in practical applications. Although noble metal Pt has been applied as an electrocatalyst, it still suffers from low stability and high cost, which significantly limits its wide applications on a large scale. Here, a series of Pt–Ln/C (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, Nd) nanoalloy catalysts were synthesized to improve the electroactivity towards methanol oxidation and suppress the CO poisoning effect of Pt. DFT calculations have unravelled the different electronic structures of different Pt5Ln samples, in which the optimal d–f coupling in Pt5Ce leads to significant improvements in both electroactivity and selectivity. Such an electronic structure also effectively suppresses the CO poisoning effect during the MOR. Pt5Ce/C shows the best performance, with a specific activity of 32.74 mA cmPt−2, which is 11.1 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (2.94 mA cmPt−2). This work demonstrates the critical promotion effect of lanthanide elements in the electroactivity of Pt due to the electronic structure perturbation, which provides new ideas for the design of efficient lanthanide alloy catalysts.

Graphical abstract: Lanthanide electronic perturbation in Pt–Ln (La, Ce, Pr and Nd) alloys for enhanced methanol oxidation reaction activity

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
06 авг. 2021
Accepted
15 септ. 2021
First published
15 септ. 2021

Energy Environ. Sci., 2021,14, 5911-5918

Lanthanide electronic perturbation in Pt–Ln (La, Ce, Pr and Nd) alloys for enhanced methanol oxidation reaction activity

S. Zhang, Z. Zeng, Q. Li, B. Huang, X. Zhang, Y. Du and C. Yan, Energy Environ. Sci., 2021, 14, 5911 DOI: 10.1039/D1EE02433G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements