Electrochemical behavior of carbonaceous aerogel supported nanocatalysts

Fuel Cells are devices for converting chemical energy of the fuel to electrical energy. One of the most important parts of a fuel cell is the catalyst layer which is responsible for the oxidation of the fuel. So far, many studies have been carried out on the synthesis of catalyst types and bases and various carbon structures have been employed as catalyst supports. Carbon aerogel is one of the emerging materials that can potentially be an ideal choice for catalyst base due to its high surface area and porous structure. In this study, carbonaceous aerogels based on carbon nanotubes were synthesized by sol-gel method and characterized by various techniques like FESEM, XRD, BJH. The density of the aerogel was 0.18 g/cm3. The BET surface area was measured to be 491 m2/g with a mean pore diameter of 14.9 nm and total pore volume (p/p0=0.98) of 1.8 cm3/g. Then, Pt and Ru nanoparticles were deposited on the support by impregnation method and the support was characterized by FESEM, XRD and ICP methods. Finally, to study the electrochemical behavior of the catalysts, cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry tests were performed and the results were compared with the commercial ones.