Abstract
Fuel cells are a key enabling technology for the future economy, thereby providing power to portable, stationary, and transportation applications, which can be considered an important contributor towards reducing the high dependencies on fossil fuels. Electrocatalyst plays a vital role in improving the performance of the low temperature fuel cells. Noble metals (Pt, Pd) supported on carbon have shown promising performance owing to their high catalytic activity for both electroreduction and electrooxidation and have good stability. Catalyst preparation by electrodeposition is considered to be simple in terms of operation and scalability with relatively low cost to obtain high purity metal deposits. This review emphasises the role of electrodeposition as a cost-effective method for synthesising fuel cell catalysts, summarising the progress in the electrodeposited Pt and Pd catalysts for direct liquid fuel cells (DLFCs). Moreover, this review also discusses the technological advances made utilising these catalysts in the past three decades, and the factors that impede the technological advancement of the electrodeposition process are presented. The challenges and the fundamental research strategies needed to achieve the commercial potential of electrodeposition as an economical, efficient methodology for synthesising fuel cells catalysts are outlined with the necessary raw materials considering current and future savings scenario.
Highlights
Direct liquid fuel cells (DLFCs) involving organic molecules are attractive power sources for portable applications due to their high theoretical energy density of fuels, rapid refueling, mild operating conditions, and simple cell design
The objective of this review is to present an overview of the progress made in the development of noble metal electrocatalysts prepared by electrodeposition for low temperature DLFCs
The present review summarised the developments in the electrodeposition of Pt and Pd-based catalysts on carbon supports, non-carbon supports with conventional supporting electrolytes, ILs, and DESs as the potential supporting electrolytes
Summary
Direct liquid fuel cells (DLFCs) involving organic molecules are attractive power sources for portable applications due to their high theoretical energy density of fuels, rapid refueling, mild operating conditions, and simple cell design. Catalyst supported on carbon with narrow particle distribution is expected to improve the fuel cell reaction performance with minimum catalyst loading Under such circumstances, electrochemical deposition is advocated as a cost-effective alternative synthesis method for obtaining metal particles of different crystalline nature (crystalline/amorphous) with various shapes, sizes without any post-processing requirement. Prior research works on single crystal Pd electrodes demonstrated that the oxidation reaction of formic acid is structure sensitive, suggesting that the facets represented on the surface of a catalyst can have a major impact Because of their superior methanol tolerance in PEM based direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) and increased activity, Pd-based nanoparticles are regarded as ideal alternative catalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORR). Future perspectives, the need for further exploitation, novel technologies, and further research are discussed in detail
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