  Nitrogen doping of the carbon is an important method to improve the
performance and durability of catalysts for proton exchange membrane fuel cells
by platinum-nitrogen and carbon-nitrogen bonds. This study shows that p-phenyl
groups and graphitic N acting bridges linking platinum and the graphene/carbon
black (the ratio graphene/carbon black=2/3) hybrid support materials achieved
the average size of platinum nanoparticles with (4.88 +/- 1.79) nm. It improved
the performance of the lower-temperature hydrogen fuel cell up to 0.934 W cm-2
at 0.60 V, which is 1.55 times greater than that of commercial Pt/C. Doping
also enhanced the interaction between Pt and the support materials, and the
resistance to corrosion, thus improving the durability of the low-temperature
hydrogen fuel cell with a much lower decay of 10 mV at 0.80 A cm-2 after 30k
cycles of an in-situ accelerated stress test of catalyst degradation than that
of 92 mV in Pt/C, which achieves the target of Department of Energy (<30 mV).
Meanwhile, Pt/NrEGO2-CB3 remains 78% of initial power density at 1.5 A cm-2
after 5k cycles of in-situ accelerated stress test of carbon corrosion, which
is more stable than the power density of commercial Pt/C, keeping only 54%
after accelerated stress test.

Applied Physics;Materials Science