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Highly active and durable core–shell electrocatalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

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Abstract

This work presents simple post-treatment methods to selectively and partially remove the Pd core of Pd–Pt core–shell (Pt@Pd/C) catalysts. The proton exchange membrane fuel cell with the post-treated Pt@Pd/C cathode (Pt loading: 0.10 mg·cm−2) delivers an impressive peak power density of 1.2 W·cm−2. The partial removal of Pd core endows an ultrahigh oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) mass activity of 0.32 A·mgPGM−1 when normalized to the platinum group metal (PGM) mass, or equivalently 0.55 A·mgPt−1 at 0.9 V measured in a fuel cell. The post-treatment thickens the Pt shells and mitigates the Pd dissolution during potential cycling. As a result, the post-treated core–shell catalyst demonstrates superior durability in ORR mass activity and polarization power density retention than untreated core–shell catalyst and benchmark Pt/C. In-situ inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) results highlight that the amount of dissolved Pd in post-treated core–shell catalyst is 17-times lower than that of the untreated one. Our findings highlight the importance of structural tuning of catalysts in enhancing their mass activity and durability.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2020YFB1505800), the Guangzhou Key Research and Development Program (No. 202103040002), and the Green Tech Fund (No. GTF202020092). M. G. would like to acknowledge the support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2022YFA1503900) and the Guangdong Scientific Program (No. 2019QN01L057).

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  1. Hsiwen Wu and Fei Xiao contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China

    Hsiwen Wu, Fei Xiao, Jing Wang & Minhua Shao

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Jing Wang & Meng Gu

  3. Fok Ying Tung Research Institute, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou, 511458, China

    Minhua Shao

  4. Energy Institute and Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong, China

    Minhua Shao

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  1. Hsiwen Wu
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  2. Fei Xiao
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  3. Jing Wang
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  4. Meng Gu
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  5. Minhua Shao
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Correspondence to Meng Gu or Minhua Shao.

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Wu, H., Xiao, F., Wang, J. et al. Highly active and durable core–shell electrocatalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Nano Res. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6297-3

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