Anode Catalytic Activity of Palladium‐Nickel Alloy Nanoparticles for Ethanol Oxidation in Alkali
Sreya Roy Chowdhury, Ms. Senjuti Banik, Ankita Mahajan, Swapan Kumar Bhattacharya
Abstract
Abstract To fabricate cost‐effective anode catalysts for direct ethanol fuel cells (DEFC), Pd and a series of bimetallic Pd x Ni 100‐x alloy nano catalyst has been synthesized by adhering toclassical wet chemical synthetic procedure. External capping agents have not been employed for stabilization of the nanoparticles. Several physicochemical characterizations reveal the generation of uniformly dispersed Pd x Ni 100‐x catalysts with average crystallite size 6 nm. The catalytic capability of the Pd x Ni 100‐x /C catalysts for ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) has been verified by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) study. It has been revealed that the peak current density is about 1.2 times higher for ethanol oxidation on Pd 80 Ni 20 /C catalyst than similarly synthesized Pd/C catalyst. Moreover, the catalytic proficiency of the bimetallic nano catalysts have been strongly dependent on the Pd : Ni ratio. The poisoning protected ability of the Pd x Ni 100‐x /Ccatalysts leads to show stable performance after several cycles of continuous operation. Cyclic voltammetric and ex‐situ FTIR study of probable intermediates of EOR like acetaldehyde, sodium acetate reveal that Ni facilitate the generation of acetate in comparison to carbonate enlightening the reasonable mechanism of the ethanol oxidation reaction on PdNi surface.