Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 1, Issue 43, Pages 13404-13410Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c3ta13134c
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy [DE-EE0003208]
- Research Growth Initiative Program of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM)
- promotive research fund for young and middle-aged scientists of Shandong Province China [BS 2011CL005]
- Science Development Project of Shandong Province China [J11LD02]
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A high-efficiency and stable electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is critical for fuel cells. Here we report a new type of ORR catalyst composed of platinum nanocrystals loaded on nitrogen-doped graphene-vanadium carbide (VC) hybrids. This is the first report on using graphene oxide as the carbon source in the synthesis of transition-metal carbides as ORR catalysts; the electrochemical tests and theoretical modeling prove that the N-doping in both VC and graphene could effectively improve the overall catalytic activity. The catalytic performance of the hybrids in alkaline solutions is superior to that of commercial Pt/C catalysts in terms of the oxygen-reduction half-wave potential and the mass activity. The stability study of the catalyst also shows less degradation in catalytic activity after 3000 cycles compared with Pt/C and the hybrid catalyst structure remains virtually unchanged. Therefore, using inexpensive hybrids of high-conductivity nitrogen-doped transition-metal carbides and nanocarbon as the catalyst support presents a new direction to optimize catalyst performance for next-generation fuel cells.
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