Effects of Co Content in Pd-Skin/PdCo Alloys for Oxygen Reduction Reaction: Density Functional Theory Predictions

Improving the slow kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on the cathode of the proton exchange membrane fuel cells to achieve the performance at a practical level is an important task. PdCo alloys appeared as a promising electrocatalyst. Much attention has been devoted to the study of the effects of the Co content on the ORR activity of PdCo films and PdCo/C nanoparticles where the Co atoms can be at the topmost surface layer. While Pd-skin/PdCo alloys with the topmost layer formed only by Pd have been proved to provide a very high ORR activity and high durability, no researches are available in the literature for the effects of the Co content on the ORR activity of Pd-skin/PdCo alloys. Hence, the effects of the Co content on the ORR activity of Pd-skin/PdCo alloys are clarified in this work by using the density functional theory calculations and Nørskov's thermodynamic model. Our results predicted that the ORR activity increases monotonically with the increase of the Co content. This behavior is particularly different compared to the Volcano behavior previously obtained in the literature for PdCo films and PdCo/C nanoparticles.