Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with Porous Carbon-Supported PtRu Single-Atom Catalysts for Coproduction of Electricity and Value-Added Formate
Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Bilal Hussain, Jiahui Chen, Yang Yang, Xuexian Wu, Hao Chen, Shahzad Afzal, Waseem Raza, Zhengxin Zeng, Fei Ye, Xueyang Zhao, Jiujun Zhang, Renfei Feng, Xian‐Zhu Fu, Jing‐Li Luo
Abstract
Bottlenecks in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) with conventional noble metals as anode catalysts involve the formation of valueless byproducts and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. Carbon-supported Pt single atoms have demonstrated high performance in DMFCs. However, the adsorbed intermediates (CO ads ) strongly bind to Pt single-atom sites, resulting in complete methanol oxidation to CO 2 and low power densities. Herein, we have developed a DMFC for CO 2 -emission-free coproduction of electricity and valuable formate using metal organic framework (MOF)-derived N-doped porous carbon-supported PtRu single-atom (referred to as PtRu SA /NPC) catalysts. The DMFC produces current and power densities of 657 mA cm –2 and 97.4 mW cm –2, respectively, at a potential of 0.65 V with a 98.4% Faraday efficiency for formate at 80 °C. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that CH 3 OH molecules preferentially adsorb onto the PtRu single atoms, but their oxidation to CO 2 molecules on PtRu SA /NPC is kinetically unfavorable due to the large energy barrier. This study offers a pathway to developing high-performance and CO 2 -emission-free electrocatalysts for DMFCs.