Abstract
Durability and limited catalytic activity are key impediments to the commercialization of polymer electrolyte fuel cells. Carbon materials employed as catalyst support can be doped with different heteroatoms, like nitrogen, to improve both catalytic activity and durability. Carbon xerogels are nanoporous carbons that can be easily synthesized in order to obtain N-doped materials. In the present work, we introduced melamine as a carbon xerogel precursor together with resorcinol for an effective in-situ N doping (3–4 wt % N). Pt nanoparticles were supported on nitrogen-doped carbon xerogels and their activity for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) was evaluated in acid media along with their stability. Results provide new evidences of the type of N groups aiding the activity of Pt for the ORR and of a remarkable stability for N-doped carbon-supported Pt catalysts, providing appropriate physico-chemical features.
Highlights
Fuel cell technologies have received considerable interest in the last decades as energy conversion devices due to their potential to reduce both pollutant emissions and the dependence on fossil fuels [1,2,3,4]
Carbon xerogels (CXGs) are named according to the R/C ratio employed, together with an N prefix to indicate N-doped CXGs (i.e., N-doped carbon xerogels (N-CXGs)-130 stands for N-doped CXG with R/C = 130)
CXG-130 showed a low pore volume of 0.29 cm3 ·g−1, mainly attributed to micropores (80%), whereas CXGs synthesized with higher resorcinol/sodium carbonate ratio, CXG-300, developed a porous structure with a larger pore volume (0.65 cm3 ·g−1 ) and a predominance of mesopores
Summary
Fuel cell technologies have received considerable interest in the last decades as energy conversion devices due to their potential to reduce both pollutant emissions and the dependence on fossil fuels [1,2,3,4]. In order to further expand the implementation of fuel cells, there are some issues that still need to be improved, like their low performance, durability, and high cost [5]. To decrease the overall cost of the catalysts, two main strategies are pursued: the use of non-platinum group metal catalysts, usually based on transition-metal-carbon-nitrogen networks [6,7,8]. It is widely known that the use of carbonaceous supports for electrocatalysts in PEMFC reduces costs (lower amounts of noble metals are needed) because of the improvement of catalytic activity [5,11,12,13], given that their physico-chemical properties can greatly affect the electrocatalyst characteristics. Carbon blacks are typically employed due to the excellent combination of structural and textural properties
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