Design And Preparation Of Copper-based Catalysts And Their Performances On Hydrogen Production Assisted By Hydrazine Hydrate

With the development of energy crisis and environmental pollution caused by fossil fuel,the desire for clean energy has become particularly important.As a green energy source,hydrogen is considered to be one of the most promising alternative to fossil fuel.Many scholars around the world have conducted a lot of researches on catalysts towards hydrogen production and many different catalysts have been developed.Among them,the noble metal-based materials are the bench-mark catalysts of hydrogen production.However,the scarcity and high cost of noble metals restrict their application in commercial needs.Thus,non-noble metal catalysts have attracted widespread attention due to their abundant storage and tunable functionality.This paper has developed three copper-based catalysts（IrCu,Au Cu and PtCu）with high catalytic activity and studied their catalytic performances.Among them,PtCu nano-alloy（PtCu-NA）catalyst showed bifunctional activity on hydrogen evolution reaction（HER）and hydrazine oxidation reaction（Hz OR）.The synthesis method includes the preparation of cuprous oxide（Cu₂O）nanocube templates,the deposition of Pt and the removal of excess Cu₂O templates.The performance of PtCu-NA in HER and Hz OR at high current density is much better than that of Pt/C.Remarkably,the as-prepared PtCu-NA needs low overpotentials of 258 m V and 668m V to drive HER and Hz OR at 148 m A cm^-2and 200 m A cm^-2,respectively,which are much better than those of commercial Pt/C（640 m V for HER and 1081 m V for Hz OR）.After coupling the HER and Hz OR together,the overall hydrazine splitting（OHz S）cell needs a small voltage of 0.59 V to deliver 178 m A cm^-2,outperformed the Pt/C（0.76 V）.Impressively,the assembled OHz S cell could run stably for more than110 h.These performances can be attributed to the regulation of crystal structure of the PtCu alloy and the synergistic effect between Pt and Cu.