Preparation of PtNiCo alloy/nitrogen-doped porous carbon composites and their electrocatalytic properties

The fine structural construction of the catalysts and the surface composition modulation methods are used to load Pt onto transition metal and nitrogen doped porous nanocarbon. Enabling the smaller size Pt-based particles are uniformly anchored on the porous carbon carrier, exposing more active sites and facilitating electron transfer and proton transport during the electrochemical process, thus enhancing the composite catalysts (Pt1Ni2Co@NC and Pt1Ni2@NC) in electrochemical reactivity. Moreover, the electronic and synergistic effects between Pt-based nanoparticles and nitrogen-doped carbon carriers can effectively anchor and bind the nanoparticles to avoid dissolution and aggregation, thus promoting the stability of the catalysts. The mass activities for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of Pt1Ni2@NC (0.84 A mgPt-1) and Pt1Ni2Co@NC (1.43 A mgPt-1) are 4.67 and 7.94 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (0.18 A mgPt-1). Meanwhile, the Pt1Ni2@NC and Pt1Ni2Co@NC catalysts exhibit excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with overpotentials as low as 28 mV and 26 mV (10 mA cm-2). After accelerated durability testing, Pt1Ni2Co@NC exhibits excellent stability for ORR and HER. This study has synthesized nitrogen-doped Pt-based ternary alloy catalysts by a simple strategy, which provides the feasibility of achieving efficient and stable bifunctional electrocatalysis for ORR and HER.