High activity and durability of a Pt–Cu–Co ternary alloy electrocatalyst and its large-scale preparation for practical proton exchange membrane fuel cells

The large-scale synthesis of catalysts with promising performance and durability for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is essential to the industrialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Pt-based alloys prepared using the co-doping strategy have shown great promise. Herein, we report a co-doping tactic for producing high-performance Pt–Cu–Co ternary alloy catalysts on a mass scale. Cu and Co are doped into the material in one step and the co-doping of Cu and Co can optimize the electronic structure of Pt, thereby weakening the adsorption of oxygenated species with Pt to enhance ORR activity. The PtCu 0·72 Co 0.01 and PtCu 0·72 Co 0.01 –10 g (scaled-up production) exhibit superior mass activity of 0.52 A mg Pt −1 and 0.43 A mg Pt −1 , respectively, and peak power density in H 2 -Air conditions of 1.15 W cm −2 and 1.01 W cm −2 . Furthermore, the mass activity of catalysts was only attenuated by 8.3% and 9.5% after 30,000 cycles, indicating reasonably good durability.