Ternary CoPtAu Nanoparticles as a General Catalyst for Highly Efficient Electro-oxidation of Liquid Fuels

Junrui Li, Safia Z. Jilani, Honghong Lin, Xiaoming Liu, Kecheng Wei, Yukai Jia, Peng Zhang, Miaofang Chi, Yu Ye J. Tong, Zheng Xi, Shouheng Sun

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

90 Scopus citations

Abstract

Efficient electro-oxidation of formic acid, methanol, and ethanol is challenging owing to the multiple chemical reaction steps required to accomplish full oxidation to CO2. Herein, a ternary CoPtAu nanoparticle catalyst system is reported in which Co and Pt form an intermetallic L10-structure and Au segregates on the surface to alloy with Pt. The L10-structure stabilizes Co and significantly enhances the catalysis of the PtAu surface towards electro-oxidation of ethanol, methanol, and formic acid, with mass activities of 1.55 A/mgPt, 1.49 A/mgPt, and 11.97 A/mgPt, respectively in 0.1 m HClO4. The L10-CoPtAu catalyst is also stable, with negligible degradation in mass activities and no obvious Co/Pt/Au composition changes after 10 000 potential cycles. The in situ surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy study indicates that the ternary catalyst activates the C−C bond more efficiently for ethanol oxidation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11527-11533
Number of pages7
JournalAngewandte Chemie - International Edition
Volume58
Issue number33
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 12 2019

Funding

DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357, and the Canadian Light Source and its funding partners. Synchrotron technical support from Dr. Zou Finfrock is acknowledged. Electron microscopy work was supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (M.C., X.L.), and was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The work was supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office under grant W911NF-15-1-0147 and by US Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fuel Cell Technologies Office. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, and is supported by the U.S.

Keywords

  • C−C bond cleavage
  • electro-oxidation
  • in situ studies
  • intermetallic structures
  • nanoparticles
  • ternary nanoparticles

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