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Fabrication of 3D hollow acorn-shell-like PtBi intermetallics via a surfactant-free pathway for efficient ethylene glycol electrooxidation

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Abstract

The synthesis of atomically ordered Pt-based intermetallic electrocatalysts for the direct alcohol fuel cells generally requires the addition of surfactants or the high-temperature annealing. However, some residual surfactants on the surface of the as-synthesized catalysts would prevent the exposure of catalytic active sites, and the high-temperature annealing process is easy to accelerate the sintering of the metal, which both lead to the decline of electrocatalytic performance. Herein, we construct the atomically ordered bimetallic PtBi intermetallics with clean surfaces and unique three-dimensional hollow acorn-shell-like structure (3D PtBi HASL) by a simple, low-temperature, and surfactant-free one-pot synthetic approach. Benefiting from the special hollow structures, the obtained 3D PtBi HASL intermetallics expose abundant accessible active sites. Moreover, the introduction of oxophilic metal Bi can enhance adsorption of OHads, thereby significantly facilitating removal of poisoned intermediates. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations further indicate that formation of the PtBi intermetallic phase with the downshift of the Pt d-band center endows 3D Pt49.4Bi50.6 HASL intermetallics with significantly attenuated COads and enhanced OHads adsorption, bringing about the boosting electrocatalytic property. The mass activity of the 3D Pt49.4Bi50.6 HASL intermetallics for ethylene glycol oxidation reaction is as high as 24.67 A·mgPt−1, which is 12.98 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (1.90 A·mgPt−1). This work may inspire the design of Pt-based intermetallics as high-efficiency anode electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (Nos. 2108085MB55 and 2208085MB24), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21571001, 21706048, and 21701001), and the Natural Science Research Project of Anhui Province (Nos. KJ2021A0004 and KJ2020ZD04).

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  1. Tingting Wan, Xin Huang, and Sichen Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Center for Atomic Engineering of Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Chemistry for Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Functionalized Materials, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Tingting Wan, Xin Huang, Sichen Li, Qiuyu Li, Xianlong Yang, Zhenjie Sun, Dong Xiang, Kun Wang, Peng Li & Manzhou Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials, Ministry of Education, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Tingting Wan, Sichen Li, Qiuyu Li, Xianlong Yang, Peng Li & Manzhou Zhu

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  1. Tingting Wan
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  2. Xin Huang
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  3. Sichen Li
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Correspondence to Zhenjie Sun, Kun Wang or Peng Li.

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Fabrication of 3D hollow acorn-shell-like PtBi intermetallics via a surfactant-free pathway for efficient ethylene glycol electrooxidation

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Wan, T., Huang, X., Li, S. et al. Fabrication of 3D hollow acorn-shell-like PtBi intermetallics via a surfactant-free pathway for efficient ethylene glycol electrooxidation. Nano Res. 16, 6560–6567 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5336-9

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