Authors
CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, Dr. K.S. Krishnan Marg, New Delhi 110012, India
Abstract
In the fabrication of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) having high performance the essential conditions are (i) the design and construction of a suitable anode electrocatalyst comprising of Pt or a Pt based alloy nanoparticles methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) efficiently and effectively (ii) nature of support materials onto which these nanoparticles are anchored. In MOR one of the major problems is the adsorption of poisoneous carbonmoxide and other similar intermediates near the active surface of Pt active leading to its deactivation and also the crossover of methanol solution towards the cathodic side. All these factors, therefore, lower the overall electrochemical performance of the electro-catalysts. In the present review paper we report some of our important results of the synthesis of different Pt and Pt based anode electro-catalysts (Pt, PtCo alloys, PtCu alloys) anchored on different support materials such as reduced graphene oxide (rGO), Nitrogen doped rGO and a hybrid of rGO/CNTs for MOR and compared with few of those already reported recently. A detailed characterization of raw materials and the electro-catalysts synthesized in this work is also discussed using XRD, FT-IR, SEM, TEM etc. The electrochemical measurements were made using cyclic voltammetry in acidic medium at room temperature.
Keywords
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