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Pt nanodendrites with a PtIr alloy surface structure exhibit excellent stability toward acidic hydrogen evolution reaction

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Abstract

The development of effective and stable electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acidic electrolytes is a significant challenge. In this work, homogeneous Pt nanodendrites (Pt NDs) with a PtIr shell were successfully synthesized by a two-step wet chemical method. This open three-dimensional (3D) dendritic structure exhibited exceptional electrocatalytic characteristics, exposing as many active sites as feasible. Furthermore, by alloying Ir with Pt on the surface, catalytic activity was greatly enhanced while ensuring extremely high stability. Iridium surface-enriched platinum nanodendritic catalysts (Pt@PtIr NDs) outperformed the control samples and the commercial catalysts. In acidic HER test, Pt@PtIr NDs had a lower overpotential (22 mV) than Pt NDs (26 mV) and commercial Pt/C (31 mV) at 10 mA/cm2, and the activity of Pt@PtIr NDs remained consistent even after undergoing a continuous durability test for at least 168 h, which was much superior to the performance of commercial Pt/C (10 h) under identical test conditions. This study revealed that the application of 3D Pt dendritic metal alloys may offer a chance for the development of enhanced electrocatalysts in acidic HER.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFA0704502), the National Key Research and Development Project of China (No. 2022YFA1503900), the NSFC (Nos. 22033008 and 22220102005), and Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China (No. 2021ZZ103).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, 350002, China

    Chang Liu, Zongnan Wei, Minna Cao & Rong Cao

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    Chang Liu, Minna Cao & Rong Cao

  3. Fujian Science and Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China, Fuzhou, 350108, China

    Rong Cao

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  1. Chang Liu
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Correspondence to Minna Cao or Rong Cao.

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Pt nanodendrites with a PtIr alloy surface structure exhibit excellent stability toward acidic hydrogen evolution reaction

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Liu, C., Wei, Z., Cao, M. et al. Pt nanodendrites with a PtIr alloy surface structure exhibit excellent stability toward acidic hydrogen evolution reaction. Nano Res. 17, 4844–4849 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-024-6454-3

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