The platinum catalysts market is highly concentrated, with the top 12 producers accounting for 68% of the global share. Heraeus, together with BASF and Johnson Matthey (UK), form the first tier, dominating high-end sectors such as fuel cells and fine chemical catalysts, while Heraeus leads the automotive exhaust gas purification sector with its high-activity carrier platinum catalysts (66.5% of the global market), and BASF provides precious metal leasing and technology solutions through its Catalyst-as-a-Service (CaaS) model. BASF provides precious metal leasing + technology solutions through the “Catalyst as a Service” (CaaS) model, which reduces the pressure on customers' capital. The second tier includes Evonik and Chinese companies such as Kaili New Material and Platinum Source Catalyst, focusing on the iteration of low-platinization technology. For example, Platinum Source Catalysts has developed second-generation platinum-cobalt alloy catalysts, with 33% lower platinum loading and a decay rate of only 3% over 30,000 cycles, which have been supplied to a number of power reactor companies.
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By structure, platinum catalysts are divided into multiphase type (solid-gas/liquid reaction) and homogeneous type (liquid reaction). Multi-phase platinum catalysts are dominant (66.5%), with carrier type:
- Alumina carrier type: used for styrene hydrogenation, with a specific surface area of 289.5m²/g and a conversion rate of 94.5% (within 100 minutes);
- Carbon carrier type: the core material of fuel cell, but the traditional platinum carbon is easy to corrode, resulting in platinum particles off;
- Metal oxide carrier type: such as Pt/TiO₂-Ov, which utilizes oxygen vacancies to enhance electrical conductivity and has 3 times higher CO poisoning resistance than traditional Pt carbon.
Among the application scenarios, fine chemicals account for 59.6%, followed by automotive exhaust purification (three-way catalyzer) and fuel cells. In the field of hydrogen fuel cells, platinum catalysts to reduce platinum loading has become a trend, for example, single-atom platinum catalysts will reduce the amount of 90%, membrane electrode loading down to 0.02mg/cm².
The core role of platinum catalysts is to reduce the activation energy of the reaction, accelerate the reaction at low/medium temperatures without consuming itself. In Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC), where the platinum catalyst drives the cathodic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), conventional platinum carbon catalysts have a mass activity of only 0.7 A/mgPt, while monatomic platinum catalysts boost the activity to 3.86 A/mgPt (5.3 times that of commercial platinum carbon) via a Pt-N₄ active center and lock in the 4-electron path to avoid by-product corrosion. The electronic metal-carrier interaction (EMSI) of Pt catalysts is key in terms of resistance to toxication. For example, in Pt/TiO₂-Ov, oxygen vacancies drive electron flow from TiO₂ to platinum, weakening CO adsorption, and the current density decays by only 3.67% after injection of 1,000 ppm CO, compared to conventional platinum-carbon decays of over 10%.
The performance of platinum catalysts depends on the carrier design and platinum dispersion process. Carrier innovations include: nitrogen-doped carbon to enhance the anchoring efficiency of platinum atoms; and titanium dioxide oxygen vacancies to optimize electron conduction. In the preparation process, the continuous microwave method has become a breakthrough point - Hubei College of Arts and Sciences used a mixed system of ethylene glycol and microwave radiation to synthesize platinum nanoparticles with uniform particle size (3.02 nm) in 3 minutes, with methanol electro-oxidation activity up to 76.95 mA/cm², a 63.6% increase compared to commercial catalysts. The challenge of mass production lies in the stability of atomic-level dispersion. Shanghai University has developed a dual-atom synergistic strategy (e.g., Pt-Fe pairing) to inhibit high-temperature agglomeration through strong metal-carrier interactions; Pt-sourced catalysis combines nano-self-assembly with Pt-Co superlattice technology to solve the problem of particle-size homogenization and large-scale preparation. Currently, the mainstream enterprises reduce the cost through low platinum alloy + laser treatment, and promote the development of platinum catalysts to the loading capacity <0.05mg/cm².
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