Facile solvothermal fabrication of Pt47Ni53 nanopolyhedrons for greatly boosting electrocatalytic performances for oxygen reduction and hydrogen evolution.

Pt-based bimetallic nanostructures with low content of Pt were considered as one of the attractive nanocatalysts for their high Pt utilization efficiency, remarkable catalytic characters and cost-effectiveness in facilitating the sluggish cathodic reactions in fuel cells. Herein, three-dimensional Pt 47 Ni 53 nanopolyhedrons (NPHs) with abundant active sites were constructed by a facile one-pot solvothermal strategy, in which cytosine and cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) worked as the co-structure directing agents. The Pt 47 Ni 53 NPHs were mainly characterized by a series of techniques, showing the high catalytic activity and stability towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in comparison to Pt 13 Ni 87 nanocrystals (NCs), Pt 63 Ni 37 NCs, commercial Pt black and/or Pt/C catalysts. Impressively, the mass activity of Pt 47 Ni 53 NPHs was about 215.80 mA mg Pt −1 for ORR, approximately 4-time increase relative to Pt black (49.60 mA mg Pt −1 ). These results demonstrate the promising applications of the synthesized nanocatalysts in energy storage and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]