NANOENGINEERING CATALYSTS IN SIZE, SHAPE, AND COMPOSITION FOR FUEL CELLS

摘要

Fuel cells represent a clean energy vector to address the energy and environmental problems today. A major area of challenge to the commercialization of fuel cells is the design and engineering of active, robust, and low-cost electrocatalysts. To address this challenge we have been developing advanced approaches to nanoengineering multimetallic catalysts in size, shape and composition. Emphasis is placed on nanoengineeried synthesis and processing of multimetallic nanoparticles with controllable size, shape, composition (e.g. Ml_nM2_(100?n), Ml_nM2_mM3_(100?n?m), M1@M2, where M (1 or 2) = Pt, Co, Ni, V, Fe, Cu, Pd, W, Ag, Cr, Au, etc), and morphology (e.g. alloy, core@shell structures, nanocubes, etc) (Figure 1). This report will describe some recent findings with examples including platinum and gold based multimetallic nanoparticle catalysts, with a focus on understanding the synergistic catalytic properties and establishing the correlation of activity and stability with size, shape, composition and alloying properties of the multimetallic nanostructures.