Emergent hierarchical porosity by ZIF-8/GO nanocomposite increases oxygen electroreduction activity of Pt nanoparticles

Hierarchically porous materials are promising as catalyst supports in fuel cells and batteries as they increase overall mass transfer and active site density. In this work, a hierarchically porous catalyst support for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in acidic media has been developed by a bottom-up approach. Graphene oxide (GO) was introduced during synthesis conditions of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) to produce hybrid material of ZIF-8/GO. Successful nanocomposite formation was realized by preserved crystallinity and chemical interaction between species as revealed by X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Introduction of GO and pyrolysis of resulting hybrid structure causes emergence of disordered meso/macropores with an accompanying increase in pore volume as revealed by N2 sorption experiments. Pt nanoparticle deposition on pyrolyzed hybrid material by polyol method results in electrocatalyst Pt/NC-1, which shows greatly improved mass activity (182 vs 86 A g−1Pt) and specific activity (467 vs 186 μA g−1Pt) at 0.8 V for ORR against reference electrocatalyst Pt/r-GO and improved specific activity against Pt/C.