ELECTROCATALYTIC BEHAVIOUR FOR THE ETHANOL OXIDATION REACTION OF SMALL NANOSTRUCTURED CRYSTALLINE Pt-BASED SUPPORTED CATALYSTS

A. BONESI; M.S. MORENO; G. ZAMPIERI; S. BENGIO; W.E. TRIACA; A.M. CASTRO LUNA

Alagoas

Simposio; International Symposium on Electrocatalysis; 2012

ISE

Direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFC) are attractive to power portable devices. Nevertheless, they undergo slow kinetics of alcohol oxidation on electrode surfaces. Efficiency is currently quite low for that cell. Research into alcohol fuel cell catalysis is focused primarily on increasing the catalytic efficiency of electrode materials. A good ethanol catalyst should have a great capacity to electro-oxidize ethanol to CO2 and water, but Pt alone shows a low capability to sufficiently favour the C-C rupture of the ethanol molecule. Therefore, the current concern in fuel cell electrocatalysis is to cope with materials that facilitate ethanol complete oxidation and shift the onset oxidation potential to lower values. In order to get a deeper knowledge of the ethanol oxidation reaction, it is important to carefully determine the role of the catalyst components and their beneficial contribution to EO catalysis. The aim of this work is to establish a comparison between PtSn/C and PtSnIr/C as catalysts for ethanol oxidation (EO).