Hydrogen generation from nanoflower platinum films

•The catalyst system in this study shows the highest rate in the literature.•Flexible thin film platinum catalysts with nanoflower morphology were prepared.•Catalyst morphology has been tailored.•We also report the highest volume based hydrogen generation rate.•A novel catalyst has been developed for hydrogen generation from borohydrides.

For the first time with this study, flexible thin film platinum catalysts with nanoflower morphology to produce hydrogen gas from chemical hydrides have been introduced. We are also reporting a novel strategy for preparing hydrogen generation catalysts. This has been achieved by dealloying of aluminum from alloys of platinum and aluminum. The efforts in tailoring the catalyst morphology have resulted with very high catalytically active surface area of 119.8 m2 g−1catalyst system. Hence, the catalyst system in this study shows the highest rate in the literature in terms of any definition of hydrogen generation rate. The platinum loading of the films was only about 44.0 μg cm−2. Therefore, using very small amount of catalysts with very high activity greatly helps to overcome the challenges associated with the price of the precious catalysts. Moreover, considerable amount of flexibility has been provided when catalysts are prepared on Teflon™ and asymmetric polymeric membranes.

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