Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been investigated in recent years as a catalyst support for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Improved catalyst activities were observed and attributed to metal-support interactions. We report a study on the kinetics of methanol electro-oxidation on CNT supported Pt-Ru alloy nanoparticles. Alloy catalysts with different compositions, Pt53Ru47/CNT, Pt69Ru31/CNT an...

Introduction Direct methanol fuel cells are very important as a clean, low cost and portable power source because of several environmental problems in traditional energy producing systems. Compared to the hydrogen fueled PEMFCs, direct methanol PEMFCs are more compact and can be used in power portable electric devices. Platinum is the most active electro-catalyst for the electro-oxidation of me...

Inclusion complexes of cyclodextrins with organometallic coordination compounds of Pd, Pt, Rh, Fe, Ni, and Ru have been used to produce porous metal-silica hybrid materials. The cyclodextrins are templates for the structure of the silica and lead to a uniform “wormtype” pore system. After the templating step the organometallic compounds can be employed as in situ precursors for the preparation ...

A hybrid carbon fiber electrode (CFE) consisting of TiO2 semiconductor photocatalyst and Pt-Ru catalyst has been developed to boost the performance of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC). These two catalyst nanoparticles are deposited on opposite sides of the carbon fiber paper such that methanol oxidation is carried out catalytically on Pt-Ru and photocatalytically on TiO2 under UV-light irradia...

By studying the adsorption of CO on up to 30 layers of Pt deposited on Ru(0001) the influence of surface strain on the adsorption energy has been disentangled from the residual chemical interaction with the substrate. While the electronic influence of the substrate has largely vanished for three Pt layers, the effect of surface strain due to the 2.5% lattice mismatch of Pt and Ru remains initia...

Amidate-bridged diplatinum(II) entities [Pt(2)(bpy)(2)(μ-amidato)(2)](2+) (amidate = pivalamidate and/or benzamidate; bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) were covalently linked to one or two Ru(bpy)(3)(2+)-type derivatives. An amide group was introduced at the periphery of Ru(bpy)(3)(2+) derivatives to give metalloamide precursors [Ru(bpy)(2)(BnH)](2+) (abbreviated as RuBnH, n = 1 and 2), where deprotonatio...

metal—polyaniline nanocomposites such as platinum-polyaniline nanocomposite is prepared by insitu oxidative polymerization of aniline and reduction of pt+4 ions into pt nanoparticles. thepolymerization of aniline was carried out in the presence of 1(2ptcn6 [potassium hexa cyanoplatinate (iv)] as oxidizing agent. during the reaction aniline monomers undergo oxidation andform polyaniline (pant) w...

Performance of low temperature fuel cells depends critically on the nanostructures of the material components in the electrodes and membranes. Some studies are reported here for 1) mixed metal nanoparticles supported on mesoporous carbon and 2) modification of nanopores of Nafion via in-situ polymerization of furfuryl alcohol. The anodic oxidation of small organic molecules such as alcohols in ...

Chemical properties of epitaxially grown bimetallic layers may deviate substantially from the behavior of their constituents. Strain in conjunction with electronic effects due to the nearby interface represent the dominant contribution to this modification. One of the simplest surface processes to characterize reactivity of these substrates is the dissociative adsorption of an incoming homo-nuc...

Core-shell structured catalysts, made by placing either a monolayer or a thin layer of a noble metal on relatively cheap core-metal nanoparticles, are fascinating and promising fuel cell catalysts due to their high utilization of noble metals. Here, we report our development of a core-shell structured catalyst, Ru@Pt/C, generated by a novel and facile pulse electrochemical deposition (PED) appr...