Design of Pt/Carbon Xerogel Catalysts for PEM Fuel Cells

Catalysts

Nathalie Job¹  Stéphanie D. Lambert¹  Anthony Zubiaur¹  Chongjiang Cao¹  Jean-Paul Pirard¹ 

[1] Laboratory of Chemical Engineering—Nanomaterials, Catalysis, Electrochemistry, University of Liège (B6a), B-4000 Liège, Belgium; E-Mails:

关键词: carbon-supported Pt catalysts;    PEM fuel cells;    dispersion;    catalyst synthesis;    carbon xerogel;   

DOI  :  10.3390/catal5010040

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The design of efficient catalytic layers of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) requires the preparation of highly-loaded and highly-dispersed Pt/C catalysts. During the last few years, our work focused on the preparation of Pt/carbon xerogel electrocatalysts, starting from simple impregnation techniques that were further optimized via the strong electrostatic adsorption (SEA) method to reach high dispersion and a high metal weight fraction. The SEA method, which consists of the optimization of the precursor/support electrostatic impregnation through an adequate choice of the impregnation pH with regard to the support surface chemistry, leads to very well-dispersed Pt/C samples with a maximum 8 wt.% Pt after drying and reduction under H₂. To increase the metal loading, the impregnation-drying-reduction cycle of the SEA method can be repeated several times, either with fresh Pt precursor solution or with the solution recycled from the previous cycle. In each case, a high dispersion (Pt particle size ~3 nm) is obtained. Finally, the procedure can be simplified by combination of the SEA technique with dry impregnation, leading to no Pt loss during the procedure.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.