Atom-glue stabilized Pt-based intermetallic nanoparticles.

Huang, Zhongliang; Wang, Yingru; Xia, Jing; Hu, Shengnan; Chen, Nanjun; Ding, Tianyi; Zhan, Changhong; Pao, Chih-Wen et al. · Sci Adv · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Pt-based nanoparticles (NPs) have been widely used in catalysis. However, this suffers from aggregation and/or sintering at working conditions. We demonstrate a robust strategy for stabilizing PtCo NPs under high temperature with strong interaction between M-N-C and PtCo NPs with Pt-M-N coordination, namely, "atom glue." Such atom glue for stabilizing Pt-based NPs can be extended to Zn, Mn, Fe, Ni, Co, and Cu, being a versatile strategy for stabilizing PtCo NPs, which substantially promotes the performance toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and fuel cell. Impressively, the mass activity (MA) reaches 2.99 A mg<sub>Pt</sub><sup>-1</sup> for ORR over <i>g</i>-Zn-N-C/PtCo, and 79.3% of the initial MA is maintained after 90K cycles in fuel cell. This work provides a versatile strategy for stabilizing Pt-based NPs via atom glue, which is likely to spark widespread interest across various fields.