Scalable Preparation of Intermetallic PtCo Fuel Cell Catalysts from Commercial Pt/C Catalysts

Abstract

Abstract Carbon‐supported intermetallic PtCo nanoparticles are among the most promising low‐platinum catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). However, achieving the synthesis of this catalyst with high performance in a simple and scalable manner remains a challenge. In this work, we achieve the scalable synthesis of high‐performance intermetallic PtCo/C catalysts from commercially available Pt/C catalysts through the straightforward optimization of synthesis parameters, including the deposition method of Co salts, the annealing atmosphere, and the direction of gas flow during annealing. Under optimized synthesis conditions, we prepared the intermetallic PtCo/C catalysts at a five‐gram scale with an average particle size of 3.9 ± 1.4 nm and a high ordering degree of 50%. With a 0.1 mg Pt cm −2 cathode loading, the resulting catalyst exhibits superior performance in H 2 ‐air PEMFCs showing power densities of 0.34 and 0.96 W cm − 2 at 0.8 and 0.67 V, respectively.