Near-infrared light-assisted methanol oxidation reaction over the ferrous phosphide

Abstract

Ferrous phosphide (Fe₂P) possesses both functions of near-infrared light (NIR) responsive and metal-support interactional behaviors, which will show great significance in photo-assisted electrocatalytic methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) areas. Hereby, we use Fe₂P as the support to load Pt nanoparticles and investigate the performance of the as-obtained Pt-Fe₂P for MOR. The results show that the synergistic effect of photocatalysis and electrocatalysis contributes to the high-performance MOR, especially under NIR irradiation. The as-obtained Pt-Fe₂P also shows excellent photoelectric response performance and long-time stability of photo-electrocatalytic activity with the assistance of NIR illumination. The mass activities of the Pt-Fe₂P catalysts with the assistance of NIR towards MOR is 2430.0 mA mg^-1_Pt, 4.7 times superior to the dark condition (521.1 mA mg^-1_Pt), which is obviously better than that of traditional electrocatalysts and some reported photo-electrocatalysts. The strong metal-support interaction between Pt and Fe₂P together with NIR excited hot electrons from Fe₂P result in the above superior photo-electrocatalytic methanol oxidation abilities. The present investigation offers a NIR-assisted electrocatalytic MOR strategy, which may be a feasible approach to further elevate the catalytic performance for MOR in photo-assisted direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs).

Keywords: Ferrous phosphide; Metal-support interaction; Methanol oxidation reaction; Near-infrared light.