Sodium Vapor-Induced Synthesis of Intermetallic Pt5Ce Compound Nanoparticles

Room-Temperature Synthesis of Sub-2 nm Ultrasmall Platinum-Rare-Earth Metal Nanoalloys for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

To tune the activity of Pt alloy electrocatalysts and reduce the Pt loading, researchers have intensively studied alloys of Pt with late transition metals. However, Pt alloy formation with rare-earth (RE) elements through the traditional chemical route is still a challenge due to the vastly different standard reduction potentials. Here, we report a universal chemical method to prepare a series of Pt/RE (RE = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Lu) nanoalloys with tunable compositions and ultrasmall particle sizes (sub-2 nm). These Pt-RE nanoalloys were synthesized by a strong liquid metal reduction with high-speed shearing assistance at room temperature. Among the nine Pt-RE alloy catalysts, the PtNd/C shows the best hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity, stability, and durability compared to commercial Pt/C. The PtNd/C shows an overpotential of 25.9 mV at the current density of 10 mA/cm² with a Tafel slope of 19.5 mV/dec and excellent stability in the acidic medium. This work not only provides a general and scalable strategy for synthesizing noble metal-RE alloys but also highlights noble metal-RE alloys as sufficiently advanced catalysts and accelerates the research of noble metal-RE alloy in energy-related applications.

Molten salt synthesis of carbon-supported Pt–rare earth metal nanoalloy catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

The synthesis mechanism of Pt–RE nanoalloy particles prepared by one-step molten salt synthesis as an advanced ORR catalyst is proposed.

Eutectic salt mixture-assisted sodium-vapor-induced synthesis of Pt-Ca nanoparticles, and their microstructural and electrocatalytic properties

We have fabricated Pt-Ca nanoparticles with oxygen reduction reaction catalytic activity via a sodium vapor-induced synthesis method. Prior addition of NaCl to form a eutectic mixture of CaCl2 and NaCl facilitated the formation of intermetallic Pt2Ca nanoparticles. Pt3Mg and Pt5Sr nanoparticles also were suggested to be producible.