Morphology-Tuning-Induced Highly Efficient Regeneration of Pt/C Nanoelectrocatalysts

The sintering-induced irreversible deactivation of precious metal nanocatalysts is one of the main obstacles for their sustainable application. Here, by adding fluorine (F)-doped carbon support to improve the redispersion and tune the morphology of platinum (Pt) nanoparticles, a sintered Pt/C electrocatalyst for methanol electro-oxidation was completely regenerated in activity and doubled in amount of catalyst and tripled in metal utilization. The morphology-tuning-induced highly efficient regeneration based on F-doped carbon was further confirmed from the regeneration of a spent Pt/C for fuel cells. The quantum chemical calculation shows that the improved redispersion and the morphology transformation of Pt nanocatalyst could be mainly attributed to the strong interaction between d states of Pt and p states of F doped on carbon. The work presented here indicates that the morphology tuning of metal nanocatalysts is another way for highly efficient regeneration of precious metal nanocatalysts. It also open...