Synthesis of modified, ordered mesoporous carbon-supported Pt3Cu catalyst for enhancing the oxygen reduction activity and durability

Abstract The modification of carbon-supported components plays an important role in increasing the interaction between carbon-supported and metal-active components in the application of PEMFC catalysts. Here, we propose a strategy for designing a catalyst by covalently modifying ordered mesoporous carbon (MC) CMK-3 and loading Pt3Cu onto modified, ordered mesoporous carbon. Ammonium persulfate (APS) was used as a modifying agent. The surface chemistry and structural properties of the modified mesoporous carbon (MMC) were characterized by BET, XPS, Raman, etc. As a result, the MMC retains the original ordered structure and introduces many oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface of MMC. Due to the optimized properties of MMC, the Pt3Cu/MMC have shown excellent mass activity of 0.58 A/mgPt, which are twice that of Pt3Cu/MC and 4.8 times of JM Pt/C. Besides, the durability test showed that after 10 K cycles, the mass activity loss was only 12.06%, exhibiting excellent electrochemical stability. In addition, the MEA shows a high power density up to 641 mW cm−2, which demonstrate a great potential of modified mesoporous carbon catalyst in practical application.