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High performance octahedral PtNi/C catalysts investigated from rotating disk electrode to membrane electrode assembly

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Abstract

Octahedral PtNi/C catalysts have demonstrated superior catalytic performance in oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) over commercial Pt/C with rotating disk electrode (RDE). However, it is not trivial to translate such promising results to real-world membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). In this work, we have synthesized octahedral PtNi/C catalysts using poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) (PDDA) as a capping agent and investigated their performance from RDE to MEA. In RDE, mass activity and specific activity of the optimized octahedral PtNi/C catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) are nearly 19 and 28 times high of the state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C, respectively. At MEA level, the octahedral PtNi/C catalyst exhibits excellent power generation performance and durability paired with commercial Pt/C anode. Its cell voltage at 1,000 mA·cm−2 reaches 0.712 V, and maximum power density is 881.6 mW·cm−2 and its performance attenuation is also less, around 11.8% and 7% under galvanostatic condition of 1,000 mA·cm−2 for 100 h. Such results are investiaged by thermodynamic analysis and fundametal performance modeling, which indicate the single cell performance can be further improved by reducing the size of PtNi/C catalyst agglomerates. Such encouraging results have demonstrated the feasibility to convey the superior performance of octahedral PtNi/C from RDE to MEA.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21676204) and the Program of Ministry of Science & Technology of China (No. 2018YFB0106503) for financial support.

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Author notes

  1. Bing Li and Jue Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automotive Studies & Clean Energy Automotive Engineering Center, Tongji University (Jiading Campus), 4800 Cao’an Road, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Bing Li, Jue Wang, Congwei Qin, Daijun Yang, Hong Lv, Qiangfeng Xiao & Cunman Zhang

  2. Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Pontoppidanstraede 101, Aalborg, 9220, Denmark

    Xin Gao

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  1. Bing Li
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  2. Jue Wang
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  3. Xin Gao
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  4. Congwei Qin
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  6. Hong Lv
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  7. Qiangfeng Xiao
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Correspondence to Qiangfeng Xiao or Cunman Zhang.

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Li, B., Wang, J., Gao, X. et al. High performance octahedral PtNi/C catalysts investigated from rotating disk electrode to membrane electrode assembly. Nano Res. 12, 281–287 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2211-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2211-9

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