Chinese Journal of Catalysis ›› 2018, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (7): 1202-1209.DOI: 10.1016/S1872-2067(18)63102-X

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Boosting fuel cell catalysis by surface doping of W on Pd nanocubes

Fawad Ahmada, Laihao Luoa, Xu Lia, Hongwen Huangb, Jie Zenga   

  1. a Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Key Laboratory of Strongly-Coupled Quantum Matter Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, Anhui, China;
    b College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan province key laboratory for advanced carbon materials and applied technology, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, Hunan, China
  • Received:2018-05-11 Revised:2018-05-18 Online:2018-07-18 Published:2018-06-07
  • Contact: 10.1016/S1872-2067(18)63102-X
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, MOST of China (2014CB932700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21603208, 21573206), Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the CAS (QYZDBSSW-SLH017), Anhui Provincial Key Scientific and Technological Project (1704a0902013), Major Program of Development Foundation of Hefei Center for Physical Science and Technology (2017FXZY002), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and CAS-TWAS president's fellowship.

Abstract:

The development of active and durable non-Pt electrocatalysts with well-defined microstructure is of great importance to both fuel cell applications and fundamental understanding. Herein, we report a surface-doping process to prepare well-defined W-doped Pd nanocubes with a tunable atomic percent of W from 0 to 1.5% by using the Pd nanocubes as seeds. The obtained 1.2%W-doped Pd nanocubes/C exhibited greatly enhanced electrocatalytic performance toward oxygen reduction reaction in alkaline media, presenting an enhancement factor of 4.7 in specific activity and 2.5 in mass activity compared to the activity of a commercial Pt/C catalyst. The downshift of the d-band center due to a negative charge transfer from W to Pd intrinsically accounts for such improvement in activity by weakening the adsorption of reaction intermediates. Also, the 1.2%W-doped Pd nanocubes/C showed superior catalytic properties for the ethanol oxidation reaction, showing great potential for serving as a bifunctional electrocatalyst in fuel cells.

Key words: Pd-based electrocatalyst, Surface-doping process, Oxygen reduction reaction, Ethanol oxidation reaction, d-band center