Tuning Structure and Properties of Pt Catalysts Confined in Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) for Electrocatalysis

Abstract

New approaches to enhance the activity of Pt electrocatalysts in the field of H2 energy are desirable, and recently Pt catalysts confined in SWNTs have been shown to possess an enhanced catalytic activity, but the way to control their structure and properties for optimized performance is still unexplored. Here, a facile two‐step process was developed to provide such control, in which Pt was firstly co‐filled with different ratio of Co in SWNTs and followed by acid treatment to remove Co. The resulting Pt catalysts (d‐Pt‐Co@SWNT) were appraised for two typical electrocatalytic applications with the correlation between structure and catalytic activity demonstrated: for amperometric hydrogen sensing, the d‐Pt90‐Co10@SWNT catalyst showed sensitivity 7 times higher than that of Pt100@SWNT; for hydrogen evolution, the d‐Pt10‐Co90@SWNT catalyst exhibited mass activity about 10 times higher than that of the commercial Pt‐C. Overall the approach provides a general route to tune structure and properties of metal catalyst confined in carbon nanotubes for different applications in many fields.