Ultrasmall and Highly Dispersed Pt Entities Deposited on Mesoporous N ‐doped Carbon Nanospheres by Pulsed CVD for Improved HER

Mesoporous N-doped carbon nanospheres are used for Pt deposition via a pulsed CVD approach. The process results predominantly in highly dispersed ultrasmall ≈1 nm sized Pt clusters along with Pt single atoms. The resulting electrocatalyst reveals an ultrahigh Pt hydrogen evolution reaction mass activity of 56 ± 2 A mg−1Pt at -50  mV vs. RHE. AbstractVapor-based deposition techniques are emerging approaches for the design of carbon-supported metal powder electrocatalysts with tailored catalyst entities, sizes, and dispersions. Herein, a pulsed CVD (Pt-pCVD) approach is employed to deposit different Pt entities on mesoporous N-doped carbon (MPNC) nanospheres to design high-performance hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts. The influence of consecutive precursor pulse number (50-250) and deposition temperature (225 –300 °C) are investigated. The Pt-pCVD process results in highly dispersed ultrasmall Pt clusters (≈1 nm in size) and Pt single atoms, while under certain conditions few larger Pt nanoparticles are formed. The best MPNC-Pt-pCVD electrocatalyst prepared in this work (250 pulses, 250 °C) reve als a Pt HER mass activity of 22.2 ± 1.2 A mg−1Pt at -50  mV versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), thereby outperforming a commercially available Pt/C electrocatalyst by 40% as a result of the increased Pt utilization. Remarkably, after optimization of the Pt electrode loading, an ultrahigh Pt mass activity of 56 ± 2 A mg−1Pt at -...

Source: Small - April 18, 2024 Category: Nanotechnology Authors: Sven K üspert, Ian E. Campbell, Zhiqiang Zeng, S. Esmael Balaghi, Niklas Ortlieb, Ralf Thomann, Markus Knäbbeler‐Buß, Christopher S. Allen, Suzanne E. Mohney, Anna Fischer Tags: Research Article Source Type: research