Electrochemical catalytic behavior for platinum functionalized TiO 2 nanotube arrays in PEM fuel cells
- PDF / 6,020,938 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 30 Downloads / 220 Views
Electrochemical catalytic behavior for platinum functionalized TiO2 nanotube arrays in PEM fuel cells Anurag Y Kawde1, Alexander W O'Toole1, Xiaoli He1, Richard Phillips1, Adam Lemke1, Thomas Murray1, Robert Geer1 and Eric Eisenbraun1* 1
College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222. ABSTRACT Conventional carbon electrode supports for platinum used in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell assemblies have issues related to carbon corrosion at typical cell operating and transient conditions. This corrosion gives rise to the evolution of greenhouse gases such as CO2, eventually degrading the carbon support and causing a loss of the catalyst specific area necessary to achieve the desired electrochemical performance. In this study, preliminary results are presented for Pt-functionalized TiO2 nanotube arrays as cathode catalyst supports for PEM fuel cells. The electrochemically synthesized TiO2 nanotube arrays were functionalized by different weight % of Pt via a solution-based approach using a dilute aqueous salt solution of hexachloroplatanic acid. Electron-beam based characterization techniques were used to study the structural and morphological features of the as-synthesized TiO2 nanotube arrays and functionalized Pt/TiO2 nanotube arrays. The electrochemical performance of the functionalized TiO2 nanotube arrays was studied by using cyclic voltammetry.
INTRODUCTION Promising renewable energy sources such as solar energy and hydrogen [1] are based on electrochemical processes [2]. Hydrogen is ideal for use in electrochemical devices like fuel cells as it has high energy density and can be used to produce electrical energy efficiently. Such fuel cells have the potential to meet future energy demands. One of the most promising types of fuel cell is a proton exchange membrane (PEM). It can operate at fairly low temperatures as compared to other commercially available solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) [3, 4].The efficiency of the PEM fuel cell depends on factors such as electrode materials, metal loadings, electrolyte composition, and membrane configurations[5-8]. Electrode materials and metal catalyst loadings on electrode materials have been given particular attention recently as they have the most significant impact on cell cost, performance, and lifetime. Teflon-bonded Pt black electrodes are commonly used as electrode materials because they have a longer lifetime compared to carbon based electrodes [9-11]. However, these require a higher amount of Pt loading, which can lead to an increase in overall cost of the cell. The amount of Pt loading can be significantly reduced by
engineering the electrode material surface area to provide the sufficient amount of Pt localized at triple phase boundary (TPB) [12]. In the present study, the potential use of Pt-functionalized TiO2 nanotube arrays as an electrode material in PEM fuel cells is discussed. Previous work has described the electrochemical activity comparison between TiO2/Pt and polycrystalline Pt electrodes [13]. This
Data Loading...
