Effect of TiB2 Pretreatment on Pt/TiB2 Catalyst Performance

• We pretreated Titanium diboride by different acids and alkali.
• We synthesis the Pt/as-pretreated TiB2 catalysts by a colloid route.
• We investigated the effects of TiB2 Pretreatment on Pt/TiB2 Catalyst Performance.
• The BET surface area and defects on the surface have a close relationship with the deposition of Pt nanoparticles.

Carbon support corrosion of traditional Pt/C catalyst is one of the major contributors causing poor durability of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). Titanium diboride (TiB2) has high electrical conductivity and considerable chemical stability, which making it as a good candidate for catalyst support in PEMFC. In this work, TiB2 was pretreated by different acid and alkali. The as-obtained samples were characterized by Ex-situ microscopy (ESM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The pore size distribution (PSD) was analyzed by using DFT method. The PSD shows distinct volume in mesopore regions (less than 50 nm). The TiB2 pretreated by H2O2 shows the biggest BET surface area of 57 m2 g−1 and its PSD focus on mesoporous (1.5-8 nm) region, which resulted to high dispersion and better loading of Pt particles. The Hydrogen oxidization reaction (HOR) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity was characterized by Rotating Disk Electrode (RDE). The Pt/TiB2 prepared by H2O2-pretreated TiB2 using the colloidal method showed better half-cell electrochemical performance. Facile synthetic for the development of Pt/TiB2 catalysts was developed.