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Highly active N-doped carbon encapsulated Pd-Fe intermetallic nanoparticles for the oxygen reduction reaction

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Abstract

Developing highly efficient non-Pt catalysts for fuel cells and metal-air batteries is highly desirable but still challenging due to the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Herein, a facile and efficient strategy is demonstrated to prepare N-doped carbon encapsulated ordered Pd-Fe intermetallic (O-Pd-Fe@NC/C) nanoparticles via a one-step thermal annealing method. The obtained O-Pd-Fe@NC/C nanoparticles show enhanced ORR activity, durability and anti-poisoning capacity in both acid and alkaline medium. When O-Pd-Fe@NC/C serving as cathode catalyst for Zn-air battery, it exhibits higher voltage platform and superior cycling performance with respect to the Zn-air battery based on the mixture of Pt/C and Ir/C catalysts. The enhanced electrocatalytic performance can be ascribed to the formation of face-centered tetragonal (fct) Pd-Fe nanoparticles, the protective action of the N-doped carbon layer and the interface confinement effect between them. The in situ formed N-doped carbon shell not only restrains the Pd-Fe ordered intermetallics from aggregating effectively during the thermal annealing process, but also provides a strong anchoring effect to avoid the detachment of Pd-Fe nanoparticles from the carbon support during the potential cycling. This facile carbon encapsulation strategy may also be extended to the preparation of a wide variety of N-doped carbon encapsulated intermetallic compounds for fuel cell application.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91963109) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2172019kfyRCPY100). The authors thank the Analytical and Testing Center of HUST for allowing the use of its help and facilities for XRD and XPS. This research used resources of the UC IMRI facilities and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a U.S. DOE Office of Science Facility, at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-SC0012704.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage (Huazhong University of Science and Technology), Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Yezhou Hu, Yun Lu, Tao Shen, Tonghui Zhao, Mingxing Gong, Ke Chen, Chenglong Lai, Jian Zhang & Deli Wang

  2. Institute of New-Energy Materials, Key Laboratory of Advanced Ceramics and Machining Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Xueru Zhao

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Huolin L. Xin

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  1. Yezhou Hu
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  2. Yun Lu
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  3. Xueru Zhao
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  4. Tao Shen
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  11. Deli Wang
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Correspondence to Deli Wang.

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Hu, Y., Lu, Y., Zhao, X. et al. Highly active N-doped carbon encapsulated Pd-Fe intermetallic nanoparticles for the oxygen reduction reaction. Nano Res. 13, 2365–2370 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2856-z

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