Synthesis And Electrocatalytic Performance Evaluation Of Pt@Fe Catalysts

Resently nitrogenous compounds has been an important source of water pollution.Nitrite,as one of nitrogenous contaminant,has been widely researched on its transformation and removal.While eletro-reduction is a promising treatment for nitrite reduction,it is quite meaningful to conduct related research.Besides,the development of electrode material with high effect,good stability and low expense is a key way for electro-reduction of nitrite.Fe is one kind of cheap metal on earth with wide distribution.Because of its broad application prospect in nitrate and nitrite removal in water,it attracts great and vast attention.Some research show that the catalytic activity of Fe nanoparticles is related to their shapes or crytal facets.So one aim of this work is to investigate the relationship between the shape of Fe nanoparticles loaded on the ITO surface and their catalytic activity towards nitrite electro-reduction.Among those single metals,Pt exhibits good performance both in catalytic activity and product selectivity towards nitrite electro-reduction.However,it is still a bit expensive for vast application and has a price cut of space by reducing Pt loading.It is proved that synthesis of nanoparticles with core-shell structure is a good way to reduce Pt loading.So the other aim of this work is to synthesis a kind of core-shell structured electrode catalyst with low Pt loading as well as high catalytic performance towards nitrite electro-reduction.Firstly,Fe nanoparticles with different shapes were successfully deposited on ITO by different electrodeposition methods(called Fe/ITO electrodes).The results showed that Fe/ITO electrode synthesized by step potential method had a better performance towards nitrite electro-reduction,which had cubic Fe nanoparticles on its surface.Besides,by tuning the growth time,the performace of Fe/ITO electrode synthesized by step potential method could be optimized.Then,through solution permutation method,low Pt loading Pt@Fe/ITO electrode was also successfully synthesized with core(Pt)-shell(Fe)structured nanoparticles on its surface.The results showed that the performance towards nitrite electro-reduction could be concluded as below:Pt@Fe/ITO electrode was better than Fe/ITO electrode,Pt/ITO electrode synthesized by CV and commercial Pt electrode.