Abstract
The widespread use of low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells for mobile applications will require significant reductions in the amount of expensive Pt contained within their cathodes, which drive the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Although progress has been made in this respect, further reductions through the development of more active and stable electrocatalysts are still necessary. Here we describe a new set of ORR electrocatalysts consisting of Pd or Pt alloyed with early transition metals such as Sc or Y. They were identified using density functional theory calculations as being the most stable Pt- and Pd-based binary alloys with ORR activity likely to be better than Pt. Electrochemical measurements show that the activity of polycrystalline Pt3Sc and Pt3Y electrodes is enhanced relative to pure Pt by a factor of 1.5–1.8 and 6–10, respectively, in the range 0.9–0.87 V.
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Acknowledgements
J.G. and T.F.J. are both recipients of H. C. Ørsted Postdoctoral Fellowships from the Technical University of Denmark. Funding by the Danish Council for Technology and Innovation's FTP program and by the Danish Strategic Research Council's HyCycle program is gratefully acknowledged. The Center for Atomic-scale Materials Design is supported by the Lundbeck Foundation. The Center for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality is supported by the Danish National Research Foundation.
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J.G., H.A.H., J.R. and J.K.N. contributed to the computational work in this paper. I.E.L.S., A.S.B., T.P.J., T.F.J., and I.C. contributed to the experimental work.
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The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has filed a patent with the authors named as the inventors.
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Greeley, J., Stephens, I., Bondarenko, A. et al. Alloys of platinum and early transition metals as oxygen reduction electrocatalysts. Nature Chem 1, 552–556 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.367
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.367
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