Effects of Sn-content and C-support in PtSn alloy nanoparticles on ammonia electrocatalysis for hydrogen production

This work focuses on the syntheses of Pt_(1-x)Sn_x (x = 0.2–0.6) alloy nanoparticle electrocatalysts by one-pot glycerol-assisted polyol reaction for ammonia electrocatalysis. Nanoparticles are characterized by XRD, STEM-EDS, XPS, ICP-AES, spectrophotometry, and Cyclic voltammetry (CV) for crystallite size, morphology and elemental mapping, electronic structure, composition, ammonia estimation, and electrocatalysis, respectively. Nanoparticles are alloyed with Pt and Sn elements evidenced by STEM-EDS mapping, and in XPS analysis, the ligand effect is found in Pt electronic structures of PtSn alloy nanoparticles. All electrocatalysts are tested for ammonia electrocatalysis in which x = 0.3 composition supported on each of carbon forms of carbon black, CNTs and graphene nanosheets (GNS), has exhibited superior performance compared to others including Pt/C. Pt_0.7Sn_0.3/GNS has improved stability conducted by chronoamperometry in x = 0.3 for 12 h over others. The consumption of ammonia measured by spectrophotometry after 12h stability test is 1.77 times higher in Pt_0.7Sn_0.3/GNS than Pt/C.