Highly Dispersed Platinum Chlorine Atoms Anchored on Gold Quantum Dots for a Highly Efficient Electrocatalyst

The development of efficient and durable electrocatalysts is the only way to achieve commercial fuel cells. A new, efficient method was utilized for epitaxial growth of gold quantum dots using atomically platinum chlorine species with porous graphdiyne as a support (PtCl2Au(111)/GDY), for obtaining successful multicomponent quantum dots with a size of 2.37 nm. The electrocatalyst showed a high mass activity of 175.64 A mg(pt)(-1) for methanol oxidation reactions (MORs) and 165.35 A mg(pt)(-1) for ethanol oxidation reactions (EORs). The data for this experiment are 85.67 and 246.80 times higher than those of commercial Pt/C, respectively. The catalyst also showed highly robust stability for MORs with negligible specific activity decay after 110 h at 10 mA cm(-2). Both structure characterizations and theoretical calculations reveal that the excellent catalytic performance can be ascribed to the chlorine introduced to modify the d-band structure on the Pt surface and suppression of the CO poisoning pathway of the MOR. Our results indicate that an atomically dispersed metal species tailoring strategy opens up a new path for the efficient design of highly active and stable catalysts.

Automated summary

The development of efficient and durable electrocatalysts is crucial for commercial fuel cells. A new method using atomically platinum chlorine species was employed to grow gold quantum dots on a porous graphdiyne support. The resulting electrocatalysts exhibited high mass activity for methanol and ethanol oxidation reactions, surpassing the performance of commercial Pt/C. The catalyst also demonstrated excellent stability in methanol oxidation reactions.