Facile fabrication of highly durable Pt NPs/3D graphene hierarchical nanostructure for proton exchange membrane fuel cells

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

<P>The catalytic activity and durability are important factors to the commercial deployment of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Recent observations offer that carbon-based support materials can significantly improve the catalytic activity, durability and long-term stability. Here, we report a new strategy for the fabrication of Pt nanoparticles (NPs) supported 3D graphene nanosheets (Pt/3D-GNS) hybrid architecture using polyvinylpyrrolidone-Nafion complex (PNC) to boost the catalytic properties in PEMFCs. The 3D hybrids nanostructure are characterized by FE-SEM, TEM, XRD, Raman and XPS analysis. FE-SEM and TEM analysis reveal that the as-synthesized Pt/3D-GNS were of high quality and well ordered similar to 5-7 nm Pt NPs particles uniformly dispersed on 3D graphene nanosheets. Impressively, Pt/3D-GNS exhibited excellent catalytic activity, outstanding durability and long-term stability than that of commercial electrode material (Pt/C). The improvement in extraordinary electrochemical performance can be endorsed to the unique morphology, high porosity, excellent conductive networks, and intense networking of Pt NPs and 3D graphene sheets in the hybrid matrix. These findings open a new path way to designate the Pt/3D-GNS hybrids as promising low-cost, highly catalytic active, durable and long-cycle life electrode materials for the development of high performance PEMFCs. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</P>