Mesoporous confined Pt-based intermetallic compound with wrinkled carbon to enhance the performance towards oxygen reduction reaction for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

The formation of small-sized (<5 nm) and high-loading (>50 wt%) Pt-based intermetallic compound structures commonly requires thermal treatment to conquer the atom-ordering barrier, which inevitably causes severe nanoparticle agglomeration and hence reduces oxygen reduction reaction activity. Herein, we provided a synthetic wrinkled carbon support by vapor deposition from methane (CH4), and then we utilized the carbon to synthesize sub-5 nm high-loading (50.6 wt%) Pt3Co1 intermetallic compound by mesoporous confinement effect. Structural characterizations reveal that the nanoparticles are mainly located in the pores of the mesoporous carbon with an average size of ca. 4.1 nm, corroborating the confinement effect of the mesoporous structure. As a consequence, the Pt3Co1 intermetallic compound catalyst exhibits superior oxygen reduction reaction activity with a mass activity (@0.9V) of 0.35 A/mgPt and satisfactory durability with a mass activity decline by 22% after 40k-cycles accelerated durability test. Membrane electrode assembly with the resultant catalyst delivers the desirable performance with the peak power density of ca. 1.0 W/cm2 while lowering the Pt loading to 0.1 mg/cm2, suggesting the practical application potential in low-Pt proton exchange membrane fuel cells.