Characterization of Catalytic Conducting Polymer Electrodes in Biofuel Devices
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MRS Advances © 2018 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2018.240
Characterization of Catalytic Conducting Polymer Electrodes in Biofuel Devices Keiichi Kaneto, Mao Nishikawa and Sadahito Uto Department of Biomedical Engineering, Osaka Institute of Technology, Osaka, 535-8585, JAPAN
Abstract
Catalytic activity of conducting polymers in biofuel cells has been studied in comparison with the performance of Pt-black (Pt-B). The cells were direct and passive type with structure of biofuel/anode catalyst/Nafion®/cathode catalyst/air. Conducting polymers of polyaniline, polypyrrole and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT*PSS) were examined for the anode and cathode catalysts. L-ascorbic acid was used as the biofuel, and the Nafion® was served as a proton transfer membrane. In the standard Pt-B anode/Pt-B cathode cell, the typical Voc (open circuit voltage) = 0.52 V, ISC (short circuit current) = 8 mA/cm2 and the Pmax (maximum power density) of approximately 0.8 mW/cm2 were obtained. In a cell with catalysts of PEDOT*PSS anode/Pt-B cathode, Voc = 0.55 V and the maximum power density of 1.2 mW/cm2 were obtained, which were larger than that of the standard Pt-B/Pt-B cell. Polyaniline and Polypyrrole were also found to be a potential candidate for catalysts in biofuel cells.
Introduction Fuel cells are studied intensively for potential electric power sources for PDA (personal digital assistant) devices, cars, houses and buildings, because fuel cells with the high performance are sustainable energy sources for the environment conservation. Fuel cells are typically composed of fuel, anode catalyst, membrane separator (Nafion®), cathode catalyst, and air (cathode material) [1,2]. The most important element is catalyst, which enhances the chemical reaction, and optimizes the conversion efficiency from chemical energy into electrical energy. Currently, the best catalysts are rare metals like Pt, Ru and Pd [2,3], which are effective universally to anode fuels such as hydrogen, alcohol, glucoses, as well as to the cathode oxygen. However, the rare metals are expensive, which prevents mass production of fuel cells. Studies to reduce the amount of rare metals in fuel cells and to replace them with the other materials has been reported [3,4]. The performance of biofuel cells depends on catalysts, for instance, in L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) as a biofuel, the power density of 7 mW/cm2 was reported based on Pd-B (black) catalyst [2,3]. The Pd-B showed the highest performance among variety of rare metal catalyses [2]. However, cells with carbon blacks like Vulcan XC72
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and Ketjenblack EC exhibited the maximum power density of ranging 12-15 mW/cm2. This figure was twice of the power density in the cell with Pd-B catalyst. The cells were the direct and act
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