Nano-size boron carbide intercalated graphene as high performance catalyst supports and electrodes for PEM fuel cells

The low utilization and stability of noble-metal catalysts is always a big barrier to commercialize proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Here we report a positive progress on stabilizing the catalyst by modulating 2D graphene as an advanced support of Pt nanoparticles, where the interlayer of graphene is near perfectly intercalated by nano-B4C ceramics. The strong restriction effect of nano-ceramics in graphene interlayers, can greatly improves the usage and electrochemical stability of Pt catalysts. As results, our new graphene/B4C supported Pt catalyst (Pt-RGO/B4C) shows greatly enhanced electrochemical surface area (121 m2 g−1) and mass activity (185 A g−1 Pt) towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which is remarkably higher than the reduced graphene oxide (RGO) supported Pt (Pt/RGO) catalyst and the commercial Pt/C catalyst. In addition, the Pt-RGO/B4C electrode also possesses higher fuel cell performance than the Pt/RGO electrode. Especially, after the electrochemical acceleration test for 10000 cycles, our new catalyst presents an excellent stability, even retains 45.2% initial electrochemical surface area, while the Pt/RGO and Pt/C are only 29.7 and 23.4%, respectively. These indicate our unique catalyst is promising to allow the PEM fuel cell have high ORR activity and stability.