High Performance Facetted Platinum Electrodes for Fuel Cells Applications

RAMOS SILVINA GABRIELA; ANDREASEN GUSTAVO; TRIACA WALTER

Surrey

Conferencia; 1st International Conference on Advances Energy Materials, 8th International Conference on Advance Nanomaterials, 2nd International Conference on Hydrogen Energy (AEM 2016); 2016

AEM 2016

Platinum is an effective electrocatalyst for electrodic reactions involved in hydrogen/oxygen proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems, particularly the oxygen electroreduction reaction. This reaction represents one of the main limitations in hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells operating at low temperatures, due to its slow electrode kinetics. To ensure maximum utilization, Pt is dispersed as nanoparticle on high surface area conductive carbon supports. The morphology and crystalline orientation of the dispersed metal are very important factors to be considered for understanding the effect of the electrocatalyst surface structure on the kinetics of electrocatalytic reactions. For this reason, the rational design and development of efficient Pt electrocatalyts have been prioritised in the last few years1. It is well known that the molecular oxygen electroreduction reaction in acid media becomes strongly dependent on Pt surface morphology in the high overpotential range, being favoured on (111)-type facetted Pt nanoparticles2. In this work, the preparation and characterization of high surface area carbon-supported facetted Pt electrocatalysts with a defined and well characterised morphology for using in PEM fuel cells is presented.