We learned from Inner Mongolia University on June 7 that the team of professor Wang Qin of this school, in conjunction with the Key Laboratory of Mobile Materials Ministry of Education of Jilin University and other national key laboratories, developed an ultra-stable three-dimensional platinum copper nanowire catalytic material. It has ultra-fine size, self-supporting rigid structure and the surface is rich in copper vacancy defects.
The research paper "Research on Improving the Electrocatalytic Performance of Precious Metal Alloys by Regulating Metal Defects and Lattice Stress" has been published in the international chemical journal "German Applied Chemistry" recently.
Wang Qin introduced that carbon-supported platinum-based electrocatalytic materials have been widely used in fuel cell cathode reduction and anodization reactions, but their poor stability, high cost, and slow reaction kinetics have limited their commercial applications. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop an efficient and durable self-supporting platinum-based electrocatalytic material.
The research team found that by alloying platinum with non-noble metals to reduce the amount of platinum and adjust the lattice stress and electronic structure, excellent redox catalytic activity can be obtained. In addition, metal vacancy defects and compressive stress can also significantly improve electrocatalytic performance. The defects can not only display unique electronic characteristics, but also form a new coordinated coordination structure with metal atoms and other active species to obtain the best catalytic performance.
The research team used electrochemical etching to synthesize high-efficiency electrocatalytic materials rich in metal vacancy defects, and synthesized ultra-stable three-dimensional platinum-copper nanowires with ultra-fine size, self-supporting structure and copper vacancy defects. The material has excellent redox reaction catalytic performance, its mass activity is 14.1 times that of commercial platinum catalysts, 7.2 times that of the US Department of Energy's 2020 development goals, and it is currently the world's best reported self-supporting precious metal catalytic material. The research team used density functional theory calculations to show that the introduction of copper vacancies changed the adsorption of platinum atoms to oxygen-containing intermediates. This research provides an important research idea for the regulation of active sites during the electrochemical activation process and the study of metal vacancy defects and lattice stress.