3D nanostructured palladium with single diamond architecture for enhanced catalytic activity

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b13230

Authors: Matthew Burton (University of Southampton) , Anand Selvam (University of Southampton) , Jake Lawrie-ashton (University of Southampton) , Adam M. Squires (University of Bath) , Nicholas Terrill (Diamond Light Source) , Iris Nandhakumar (University of Southampton)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Acs Applied Materials & Interfaces

State: Published (Approved)
Published: October 2018
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 14925 , 10330 , 16964

Abstract: Fuel cells are a key new green technology that have applications in both transport and portable power generation. Carbon supported platinum (Pt) is used as an anode and cathode electrocatalyst in low-temperature fuel cells fuelled with hydrogen or low molecular weight alcohols. The cost of Pt and the limited world supply are significant barriers to the widespread use of these types of fuel cells. Compara-tively palladium has a three times higher abundance in the Earth’s crust. Here a facile, low temperature and scalable synthetic route to-wards 3D nanostructured palladium (Pd) employing electrochemical templating from inverse lyotropic lipid phases is presented. The obtained single diamond morphology Pd nanostructures exhibited excellent catalytic activity and stability towards methanol, ethanol and glycerol oxidation compared to commercial Pd black and the nanostructure was verified by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), scanning tunneling electron microscopy (STEM) as well as by cyclic voltammetry (CV).

Journal Keywords: Pd; fuel cells; nanostructured; electrodeposition; catalysis; methanol; ethanol

Subject Areas: Materials, Chemistry

Diamond Offline Facilities: Electron Physical Sciences Imaging Center (ePSIC)
Instruments: E02-JEM ARM 300CF , I22-Small angle scattering & Diffraction