Nanomaterials (Jul 2022)

Bimetallic Pt-Ni Nanoparticles Confined in Porous Titanium Oxide Cage for Hydrogen Generation from NaBH<sub>4</sub> Hydrolysis

  • Yuqian Yu,
  • Li Kang,
  • Lixian Sun,
  • Fen Xu,
  • Hongge Pan,
  • Zhen Sang,
  • Chenchen Zhang,
  • Xinlei Jia,
  • Qingli Sui,
  • Yiting Bu,
  • Dan Cai,
  • Yongpeng Xia,
  • Kexiang Zhang,
  • Bin Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/nano12152550
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 15
p. 2550

Abstract

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Sodium borohydride (NaBH4), with a high theoretical hydrogen content (10.8 wt%) and safe characteristics, has been widely employed to produce hydrogen based on hydrolysis reactions. In this work, a porous titanium oxide cage (PTOC) has been synthesized by a one-step hydrothermal method using NH2-MIL-125 as the template and L-alanine as the coordination agent. Due to the evenly distributed PtNi alloy particles with more catalytically active sites, and the synergistic effect between the PTOC and PtNi alloy particles, the PtNi/PTOC catalyst presents a high hydrogen generation rate (10,164.3 mL∙min−1∙g−1) and low activation energy (28.7 kJ∙mol−1). Furthermore, the robust porous structure of PTOC effectively suppresses the agglomeration issue; thus, the PtNi/PTOC catalyst retains 87.8% of the initial catalytic activity after eight cycles. These results indicate that the PtNi/PTOC catalyst has broad applications for the hydrolysis of borohydride.

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