Exploring the role of nickel in the formation of amorphous Pt-based metallic alloys for methanol electro-oxidation with significant enhancement

摘要

Amorphous PtNiP ternary nanoparticles were successfully synthesized via a hypophospite-assisted reduction process for methanol electro-oxidation. Due to the difficulty of P doping into pure Pt, it was found that improving the reaction temperature led to the phase transformation of Pt-P binary alloys from amorphous to crystalline by the same hypophospite-assisted reduction method. Adding a small quantity of nickel salt in the PtP synthetic solution could promote the P content by the formation of NiP matrixes, leading to the PtNiP ternary nanoparticles with amorphous structure. Notably, amorphous PtNiP ternary nanoparticles showed high electrochemical activity and long-term stability for methanol oxidation, which was explained by XPS analysis.