Abstract
Hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline media is critical for alkaline fuel cells and electrochemical ammonia compressors. The slow hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline electrolytes requires large amounts of scarce and expensive platinum catalysts. While transition metal decoration can enhance Pt catalysts’ activity, it often reduces the electrochemical active surface area, limiting the improvement in Pt mass activity. Here, we enhance Pt catalysts’ activity without losing surface-active sites by using a Pd-Ru pair. Utilizing a mildly catalytic thermal pyrolysis approach, Pd-Ru pairs are decorated on Pt, confirmed by extended X-ray absorption fine structure and high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy. Density functional theory and ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations indicate preferred Pd and Ru dopant adsorption. The Pd-Ru decorated Pt catalyst exhibits a mass-based exchange current density of 1557 ± 85 A g−1metal for hydrogen oxidation reaction, demonstrating superior performance in an ammonia compressor.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7245 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2024 |
Funding
L. C. and C. W. at the University of Maryland gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Advanced Research Projects Agency\u2013Energy under Contract No. DEAR0000962. This research used beamlines 7-BM of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. Computational resources from Texas A&M Supercomputing Center and from Texas Advanced Computing Center at UT Austin are gratefully acknowledged. X. L. and K. H. acknowledge the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (62493-DNI10) for partial support of this research. A portion of STEM-EDS research conducted as part of a user project at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a US Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.