Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2011, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (10): 2379-2384.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB20110922

• ELECTROCHEMISTRY AND NEW ENERGY • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Preparation of High Performance Core-Shell PdRu@Pt/CNT Electrocatalyst

DANG Dai1, GAO Hai-Li1, PENG Liang-Jin1, SU Yun-Lan2, LIAO Shi-Jun1, WANG Ye1   

  1. 1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, P. R. China;
    2. Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, P. R. China
  • Received:2011-04-25 Revised:2011-06-29 Published:2011-09-27
  • Contact: LIAO Shi-Jun E-mail:chsjliao@scut.edu.cn
  • Supported by:

    The project was supported by the National University Student Innovation Program, China (081056118) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (20673040, 20876062, 21076089).

Abstract: We prepared a low Pt loading core-shell structured catalyst PdRu@Pt/CNT (carbon nanotube) with a PdRu alloy as the core and platinum as the shell in addition to carbon nanotubes as supports in a two-stage precipitation-reduction approach. For the anodic oxidation of methanol the activity in terms of Pt loading increased by 70% compared with the lab-made Pt/CNT catalyst and the ratio of the forward current density (If) to the backward current density (Ib) was as high as 2, which is two times of that of Pt/ CNT, indicating that the dispersion and use of platinum effectively improves by covering the surface of the PdRu cores with platinum. Excellent tolerance towards the intermediates of the anodic oxidation of methanol may result from the interaction between the Pt shell and the PdRu core. The core-shell structure of the catalysts was revealed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The TEM image showed that the active components are highly dispersed on the CNT with a particle size of 4.0 nm. The high platinum utilization and high performance as well as good tolerance toward poisons make the PdRu@Pt/CNT catalyst a promising low-Pt catalyst for low temperature fuel cell applications.

Key words: Fuel cell, Methanol oxidation, Core-shell structure, Catalyst