Highly active nitrogen-doped nanocarbon electrocatalysts for alkaline direct methanol fuel cell

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Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2015-05-01
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
9
94-102
Series
JOURNAL OF POWER SOURCES, Volume 281
Abstract
Direct methanol fuel cells are assembled and evaluated using Fumatech FAA3 alkaline anion exchange membrane. Two novel metal-free cathode catalysts are synthesised, investigated and compared with the commercial Pt-based catalyst. In this work nitrogen-doped few-layer graphene/multi-walled carbon nanotube (N-FLG/MWCNT) composite and nitrogen-doped MWCNT (N-MWCNT) catalyst are prepared by pyrolysing the mixture of dicyandiamide (DCDA) and carbon nanomaterials at 800 °C. The resulting cathode catalyst material shows a remarkable electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in 0.1 M KOH solution employing the rotating disk electrode (RDE) method. Fuel cell tests are performed by using 1 M methanol as anode and pure oxygen gas cathode feed. The maximum power density obtained with the N-FLG/MWCNT material (0.72 mW cm−2) is similar to that of the Pt/C catalyst (0.72 mW cm−2), whereas the N-MWCNT material shows higher peak power density (0.92 mW cm−2) than the commercial Pt/C catalyst.
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Keywords
Few-layer graphene; Carbon nanotubes;, Non-platinum catalysts; Alkaline Fuel Cell, Oxygen reduction; Nitrogen doping;
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Citation
Kruusenberg , I , Ratso , S , Vikkisk , M , Kanninen , P , Kallio , T , Kannan , A M & Tammeveski , K 2015 , ' Highly active nitrogen-doped nanocarbon electrocatalysts for alkaline direct methanol fuel cell ' , Journal of Power Sources , vol. 281 , pp. 94-102 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2015.01.167