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Plasma-enabled synthesis of ordered PtFe alloy nanoparticles encapsulated with ultrathin N-doped carbon shells for efficient methanol electrooxidation

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Abstract

Methanol oxidation reaction (MOR), the key reaction for clean energy generation in fuel cells, is kinetically sluggish and short-lasting because of insufficient catalytic activity and stability of the common Pt-based electrocatalysts. Ordered Pt alloy structures which promise to surmount these issues, are challenging and impractical to fabricate using common high-temperature annealing. To address the urgent need for simple and rapid synthesis methods for such alloys, here we report the versatile plasma-assisted thermal annealing synthesis of a robust electrocatalyst with PtFe alloys supported on N-doped carbon nanotubes (denoted as PtFe@NCNT-P). Benefiting from the reactive plasma-specific effects, the PtFe@NCNT-P electrocatalyst features ultrafine PtFe alloy nanoparticles (mean size ∼ 2.88 nm, ordered degree ∼ 87.07%) and ultrathin N-doped carbon (NC) shells (0.3–0.7 nm), leading to the excellent catalytic activity and stability toward MOR. The catalyst shows the specific and mass activities of 3.99 mA/cm2 and 2,148.5 mA/mg, which are 7.82 and 7.41 times higher than those for commercial Pt/C (0.51 mA/cm2, 290 mA/mg), and 2.18 and 2.59 times higher compared to the plasma-untreated PtFe@NCNT (1.83 mA/cm2, 829.5 mA/mg), respectively. The PtFe@NCNT-P further exhibits extraordinary stability during the long-term chronoamperometry test and 1,000-cycle cyclic voltammetry scanning, much better compared to PtFe@NCNT samples even after the longer thermal annealing. These findings show great potential of the plasma-enabled synthesis of high-performance carbon-supported metallic electrocatalysts for the emerging clean energy technologies.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. 2208085MA16), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11575253), the Anhui Provincial key research and development plan (No. 1704a0902017), the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China (No. 1608085J03), the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences Director’s Fund (No. YZJJ201505), and the Key Lab of Photovoltaic and Energy Conservation Materials of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. PECL2018QN005). K. O. acknowledges partial support from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and QUT Centre for Materials Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Xuxu Sun, Ruiqi Wang, Xiaohu Pi, Changle Chen & Qi Wang

  2. University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Xuxu Sun, Ruiqi Wang, Changle Chen & Qi Wang

  3. Rutgers Preparatory School, New Jersey, 1345 Easton Ave, Somerset, NJ, 08873, USA

    Zhijian Mao

  4. Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Xiaohu Pi

  5. College of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, Zigong, 643000, China

    Junbo Zhong

  6. School of Chemistry and Physics and QUT Centre for Materials Science, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, QLD, 4000, Australia

    Kostya Ken Ostrikov

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  1. Xuxu Sun
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Correspondence to Qi Wang.

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Plasma-enabled synthesis of ordered PtFe alloy nanoparticles encapsulated with ultrathin N-doped carbon shells for efficient methanol electrooxidation

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Sun, X., Mao, Z., Wang, R. et al. Plasma-enabled synthesis of ordered PtFe alloy nanoparticles encapsulated with ultrathin N-doped carbon shells for efficient methanol electrooxidation. Nano Res. 16, 2065–2075 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4890-5

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