Last modified: 2014-10-08
Abstract
From both an energy and environmental point of view, electro-oxidation of ammonia has received considerable and increasing attention for various applications such as ammonia-based low-temperature fuel cells, the production of high-purity hydrogen, the electrochemical decomposition of ammonia and the fabrication of electrochemical sensors. However, the large-scale applications of ammonia electro-oxidation technologies have been strongly hindered by the insufficient performance and the high cost of the electrocatalysts related with the usage of high Pt loadings. Since ammonia electro-oxidation is a highly structure sensitive reaction and Pt(100) exhibits a much higher activity toward ammonia oxidation compared with Pt(111), extensive studies have been focused on fabrication of preferentially (100) oriented Pt nanoparticles. In the present work, Pt nan particles with preferential (100) orientation was prepared by a simple electrodeposition method without the use of any surfactants or organic additives. The effects of the electrodeposition parameters on the preferential orientation of the formed Pt particles were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electrochemical methods. The electrocatalytic activity of the Pt nanoparticles for ammonia oxidation was characterized by cyclic voltammetry. The results showed that (100) oriented Pt nanoparticles can be successfully prepared by electrodeposition in 5mM H2PtCl6 and 0.5 M HCl solution through controlling the depositing current density. The fraction of the Pt (100) sites increases as the depositing current density increases from 0.04 to 2 mA cm-2, and the preferential orientation was confirmed by the high resolution TEM images. Furthermore, as the Pt (100) fraction increases, the specific activity of the Pt nanoparticles for ammonia oxidation increases obviously.