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Enhancing catalytic H2 generation by surface electronic tuning of systematically controlled Pt-Pb nanocrystals

  • Bin E
  • Bolong Huang
  • Nan Zhang
  • Qi Shao
  • Yujing Li
  • Xiaoqing HuangEmail author
Research Article
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Abstract

Although many previous studies have shown that the shape-control of nanocrystal (NCs) is an efficient strategy to improve the catalytic performance, these syntheses were conducted under very different conditions, which are not suitable for the shape-dependent properties studies as well as catalysis optimization. Herein, we demonstrate an effective method for the selective synthesis of well-defined PtPb NCs in a highly controllable manner. Four distinct PtPb NCs, namely PtPb peanut nanocrystals, PtPb hexagonal nanoplates, PtPb octahedra nanocrystals (ONCs) and PtPb nanoparticles have been selectively prepared in the presence of different phenols. Significantly, we found that the created PtPb NCs/C shows the shape-dependent activity with the optimized PtPb ONCs/C being the most active for the ethanol reforming to H2, 22.4 times higher than the commercial Pt/C. The high performance of PtPb ONCs/C has been also successfully expanded into other polyhydric alcohols reformings. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) reveals that the high Pt(0)/Pt(II) ratio in PtPb NCs/C enhances the alcohols reforming. The density functional theory (DFT) studies show the PtPb ONCs possess the highest surface averaged electronic occupation for unit Pt-atom, matching well with XPS results. The PtPb ONCs/C also displays excellent durability with limited activity decay and negligible structure/composition changes after ten cycles. This work demonstrates an important advance in the high-level control of metallic nanostructures to tune the catalytic activities.
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Keywords

surface electronic structure shape control PtPb nanocrystal hydrogen generation alcohol reforming 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Technology R&D Program of China (Nos. 2016YFA0204100 and 2017YFA0208200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21571135), Young Thousand Talented Program, the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (No. 17KJB150032), the project of scientific and technologic infrastructure of Suzhou (No. SZS201708), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), and the start-up supports from Soochow University.

Supplementary material

12274_2019_2305_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (7.7 mb)
Enhancing catalytic H2 generation by surface electronic tuning of systematically controlled Pt-Pb nanocrystals

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Copyright information

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  • Bin E
    • 1
    • 3
    • 4
  • Bolong Huang
    • 2
  • Nan Zhang
    • 1
  • Qi Shao
    • 1
  • Yujing Li
    • 3
    • 4
  • Xiaoqing Huang
    • 1
    Email author
  1. 1.College of Chemistry, Chemical engineering and Materials ScienceSoochow UniversitySuzhouChina
  2. 2.Department of Applied Biology and Chemical TechnologyThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, KowloonHong Kong SARChina
  3. 3.College of MaterialsBeijing Institute of TechnologyBeijingChina
  4. 4.Department of Materials Science and EngineeringChina University of PetroleumBeijingChina

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