Authors: Haijing Yan Meichen Meng Lei Wang Aiping Wu Chungui Tian Lu Zhao Honggang Fu
Publish Date: 2015/12/28
Volume: 9, Issue: 2, Pages: 329-343
Abstract
The application of direct methanol fuel cells DMFC is hampered by high cost low activity and poor CO tolerance by the Pt catalyst Herein we designed a fancy 3D hybrid by anchoring tungsten nitride WN nanoparticles NPs of about 3 nm in size into a 3D carbon nanotubereduced graphene oxide framework CNTrGO using an assembly route After depositing Pt the contacted and strongly coupled Pt–WN NPs were formed resulting in electron transfer from Pt to WN The 3D Pt–WN/CNTrGO hybrid can be used as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for both methanol oxidation reaction MOR and oxygen reduction reaction ORR In MOR the catalysts showed excellent CO tolerance and a high mass activity of 7024 mA·mgPt –1 244 and 381 times higher than those of Pt/CNTrGO and Pt/CJM catalysts respectively The catalyst also exhibited a more positive onset potential 103 V higher mass activity 1513 mA·mgPt –1 and better cyclic stability and tolerance in MOR than ORR The catalyst mainly exhibited a 4etransfer mechanism with a low peroxide yield The high activity was closely related to hybrid structure That is the 3D framework provided a favorable path for masstransfer the CNTrGO support was favorable for charge transfer and strongly coupled Pt–WN can enhance the catalytic activity and COtolerance of Pt Pt–WN/CNTrGO represents a new 3D catalytic platform that is promising as an electrocatalyst for DMFC because it can catalyze both ORR and MOR in an acidic medium with good stability and highly efficient Pt utilization
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