The Advanced Designs of High-Performance Platinum-Based Electrocatalysts: Recent Progresses and Challenges

Platinum (Pt) is considered the Holy Grail of electrocatalysts, which has emerged as an important branch in electrocatalysts. Designing electrocatalysts is the first and most important step to achieve Pt with advanced performance. However, the traditional composition and morphology strategies have been unable to further promote the performances of Pt-based materials. Therefore, some new strategies for advanced Pt-based catalysts, including phase-, surface-, interface-, and strain-engineered, emerged at a historic moment, which have harvested unprecedented electrochemical improvements. Herein, recent advances of the above new strategies for designing high-performance Pt-based electrocatalysts are highlighted. In each section, the authors first introduce the basic concepts of phase-, surface-, interface-, and strain-engineered strategies and their essences for improving the electrocatalyic performances. The synthetic methods and electrochemical applications of these catalysts are summarized and demonstrated by representative examples. Finally, the recent challenges and valuable perspectives for the future development of advanced Pt-based catalysts are proposed.