Ultra-low Pt-decorated NiCu bimetallic alloys nanoparticles supported on reduced graphene oxide for electro-oxidation of
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Research Letter
Ultra-low Pt-decorated NiCu bimetallic alloys nanoparticles supported on reduced graphene oxide for electro-oxidation of methanol Ammar Bin Yousaf*, Sajeda Adnan Mutlaq Alsaydeh, Fathima Sifani Zavahir, Peter Kasak, and Syed Javaid Zaidi*, Center for Advanced Materials, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar *Address all correspondence to Yousaf and Zaidi at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] (Received 25 May 2018; accepted 13 July 2018)
Abstract The selectivity of catalyst is an essential factor in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) and plays an important role to improve their performance. To this end, platinum (Pt)-based low-cost trimetallic catalysts have been developed. The catalyst comprising ultra-low Pt-decorated NiCu bimetallic alloys nanoparticles fabricated on reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The series of Pt-NiCu/rGO nanocomposites were synthesized with different compositions to obtain the optimal conditioned material. The electrochemical results showed good performance for the electro-oxidation of methanol at anodic end of DMFCs. These outcomes opened up a broad avenue for developing lower cost-active catalysts with better performance for DMFCs.
Introduction Renewable energy devices attracted huge attention to overcome the depletion of fossil fuels and mitigate the faced energy challenges for present and upcoming human societies. Among those, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) are one of them to produce clean energy with environmentally safe nature. Plenty of work had been done to improve the DMFCs anodes for achieving enhanced and durable performance.[1,2] The platinum (Pt) or Pt-based catalysts were extensively used as anode materials for electro-oxidation of methanol in DMFCs.[3] Later on, due to the poisoning and degradation issues of monometallic Pt, other noble metals were incorporated with Pt to develop bimetallic or trimetallic electrocatalysts with enhanced performance.[4,5] These strategies also faced challenges, as the catalysts cannot balance the overall cost of DMFCs at industrial levels, where the reason is that the high cost and the lowabundant noble metals are unable to resolve these problems.[6] In particular, the past research also proved that the dispersion of active catalysts on conductive support materials is also important to obtain maximum performance of the whole catalyst materials, such as on carbon black, carbon nanotubes, and reduced graphene oxide (rGO). Hence, the rGO can be widely used as a promising candidate among them, to fabricate the metallic catalysts in DMFCs, due to its unique properties, i.e., the enhanced mechanical and electronic properties.[7,8] Earth-abundant transition metals remained an auspicious choice to use in a combination with precious metals to overcome the cost effects in large-scale industries. In a family of transition metals, nickel (Ni)[9,10] incorporated with other noble and non-noble metals such as Pt, palladium (Pd)[11,12]
copper (Cu),[13] manganese[14] as electrocatalyst
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