(600w) High-Performance Dealloyed PtCu/Cunw Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalyst for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

One major barrier to fuel cell commercialization is the high cost of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts. Current catalysts are predominantly supported Pt nanoparticles. These nanoparticles show high surface area but low specific activity and durability. A transition to unsupported catalysts possessing an extended surface should improve both specific activity and durability and in turn, cost-effectiveness when high surface area can be achieved. Platinum-coated copper nanowires (Pt/CuNW) exemplify these advantages. In this study, post-synthetic processing is used to further improve the performance of Pt/CuNW catalyst. Specifically, annealing followed by electrochemical dealloying enhances activity through geometric lattice tuning. The resultant bimetallic PtCu/CuNW catalyst yields specific and mass activities (SA and MA) of 2.65 mA cm^-2 and 1.24 A mg_Pt^-1, surpassing the respective DOE benchmarks of 0.72 mA cm^-2 and 0.44 A mg_Pt^-1. PtCu/CuNWs demonstrate enhanced durability over Pt nanoparticle catalysts by maintaining 64.1 % of its active surface area after 30,000 cycles between 0.6 - 1.1 vs. RHE at a scan rate of 50 mV s^-1 in Ar saturated 0.1 M HClO₄. Post durability PtCu/CuNWs outperformed the DOE benchmarks with a SA and MA of 1.50 mA cm^-2 and 0.477 A mg_Pt^-1.