Iridium-decorated palladium-platinum core-shell catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction in proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Chen-Hao Wang; Hsin-Cheng Hsu; Kai-Ching Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.068

Iridium-decorated palladium-platinum core-shell catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction in proton exchange membrane fuel cell

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2014 Aug 1:427:91-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.068. Epub 2013 Dec 14.

Authors

Chen-Hao Wang¹, Hsin-Cheng Hsu², Kai-Ching Wang²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 10607 Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address: chwang@mail.ntust.edu.tw.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 10607 Taipei, Taiwan.

PMID: 24388448
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.068

Abstract

Carbon-supported Pt, Pd, Pd-Pt core-shell (Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C) and Ir-decorated Pd-Pt core-shell (Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C) catalysts were synthesized, and their physical properties, electrochemical behaviors, oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) characteristics and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) performances were investigated herein. From the XRD patterns and TEM images, Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C has been confirmed that Pt was deposited on the Pd nanoparticle which had the core-shell structure. Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C has more positive OH reduction peak than Pt/C, which is beneficial to weaken the binding energy of Pt-OH during the ORR. Thus, Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C has higher ORR activity than Pt/C. The maximum power density of H2-O2 PEMFC using Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C is 792.2 mW cm(-2) at 70°C, which is 24% higher than that using Pt/C. The single-cell accelerated degradation test of PEMFC using Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C shows good durability by the potential cycling of 40,000 cycles. This study concludes that Ir-decorated Pt(shell)-Pd(core)/C has the low Pt content, but it can facilitate the low-cost and high-efficient PEMFC.

Keywords: Core–shell structure; Fuel cell; Oxygen reduction reaction.