Engineering lanthanum into Pt doped CeO2 for Intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells

Platinum doped oxides with extremely low utilization of noble metal and excellent catalytic activity have gained attention in high-temperature electrochemical cells. However, platinum ions tend to be reduced in reducing atmospheres, resulting in the catalyst deactivation. In this work, lanthanum is introduced into Pt-CeO2, which aims to deal with the above problem and provides an approach to promote Pt-CeO2 based catalysts for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells. In specific, lanthanum doped Pt-CeO2 catalysts are prepared and infiltrated into the anode. The results show the highest peak power density with 10 mol% lanthanum doped Pt-CeO2 among all samples. In-situ ambient pressure X-ray photoemission spectroscopy investigation reveals that the reducibility of CeO2 can be tailored by lanthanum dopants, which leads to exceptional stability of active Pt2+ in reducing atmospheres. Our results foster the development of more stable and inexpensive Pt-CeO2 for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells.