title: Amorphous nickel boride membrane on a platinum-nickel alloy surface for enhanced oxygen reduction reaction.
abstract: The low activity of the oxygen reduction reaction in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells is a major barrier for electrocatalysis, and hence needs to be optimized. Tuning the surface electronic structure of platinum-based bimetallic alloys, a promising oxygen reduction reaction catalyst, plays a key role in controlling its interaction with reactants, and thus affects the efficiency. Here we report that a dealloying process can be utilized to experimentally fabricate the interface between dealloyed platinum-nickel alloy and amorphous nickel boride membrane. The coating membrane works as an electron acceptor to tune the surface electronic structure of the platinum-nickel catalyst, and this composite catalyst composed of crystalline platinum-nickel covered by amorphous nickel boride achieves a 27-times enhancement in mass activity relative to commercial platinum/carbon at 0.9 V for the oxygen reduction reaction performance. Moreover, this interactional effect between a crystalline surface and amorphous membrane can be readily generalized to facilitate the 3-times higher catalytic activity of commercial platinum/carbon.
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.
authors: Daping
authors: D
authors: He
authors: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029 China.
authors: Libo
authors: L
authors: Zhang
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.
authors: Dongsheng
authors: D
authors: He
authors: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029 China.
authors: Gang
authors: G
authors: Zhou
authors: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.
authors: Yue
authors: Y
authors: Lin
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.
authors: Zhaoxiang
authors: Z
authors: Deng
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.
authors: Xun
authors: X
authors: Hong
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.|Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.|Collaborative Innovation Center for Nanomaterial Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.
authors: Yuen
authors: Y
authors: Wu
authors: Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.|Collaborative Innovation Center for Nanomaterial Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.
authors: Chen
authors: 0000-0001-5902-3037
authors: C
authors: Chen
authors: Center of Advanced Nanocatalysis (CAN-USTC), University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 China.|Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.|Collaborative Innovation Center for Nanomaterial Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 China.
authors: Yadong
authors: Y
authors: Li