Ultrasmall Metal Particles Embedded in Nitrogen-doped Carbon for Electrocatalysis

Abstract

Platinum-based catalysts are critical to many important commercial chemical processes, but platinum utilization in these electrocatalysts is extremely low, as the active sites are only located on the surface of the catalyst particles. Downsizing catalyst nanoparticles to single atoms is highly desirable to maximize their efficiency by utilizing nearly all platinum atoms. However, making them is challenging. Here we report a novel method to produce isolated single platinum atoms by galvanic replacement between PtCl62- and Coo. XRD, TEM, HR-TEM, and EDS results conclude that the Pt can be controlled on a single atom scale. The single-atoms catalyst has higher stability which is strictly related to the N-doped porous carbon support. With reduced Pt loading weight, the synthesized single atoms dispersed catalyst is found to have higher mass activity for HER in both alkaline and acid electrolytes.