Optimized Adsorption of H_ad and OH_ad over Amorphous SrRuPtO_xH_y Nanobelts towards Efficient Alkaline Fuel Cell Catalysis

Abstract PtRu‐based catalysts toward hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) suffer from low efficiency, CO poisoning and over‐oxidation at high potentials. In this work, an amorphization strategy is adopted for preparation of amorphous SrRuPtO x H y nanobelts (a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs). The a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs has optimized adsorption of intermediates (H and OH), increased number of active sites, highly weakened CO poisoning and enhanced anti‐oxidation ability owing to the special amorphous structure. Consequently, a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs displays superior HOR performance with a mass activity of 7.5 A/mg Pt+Ru , 25 and 5 times of that of SrRuPt(OH) x NBs and commercial PtRu/C, respectively, and long‐lasting stability. Besides, a peak power density of 750 mW/cm 2 and a specific power of 14.8 W/mg Pt+Ru have been achieved for a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs at a low loading of 0.05 mg Pt+Ru /cm 2 , surpassing many reported HOR catalysts. Mechanism investigation indicates that Pt and Ru are present in oxide/hydroxide forms and H in a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs participates in HOR. Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations and density functional theory (DFT) calculations show that there are three catalytic mechanisms participating in a‐SrRuPtO x H y NBs, which all exhibit low catalytic barrier and highly improved HOR efficiency. This work provides a new strategy for designing high‐performance catalysts towards fuel cells.