A Simple and High Efficient Direct Glycerol Fuel Cell with Cu-Nanoparticles Incorporated Polymeric Film Modified Electrode

Development of alternative low temperature power source is an important and interesting subject for researchers in the world. Direct alcohol fuel cells (DAFCs) have attracted considerable interest in their application alternative power sources for portable consumer electronics and even automotives [1]. Among the different alcohols, glycerol has attracted more interest in recent years, due to its lower toxicity, renewability from biomass, and relatively high theoretical energy density as compared to other alcohol fuels [2]. The non-Pt-based nanoparticles are commonly used as electrocatalysts in the fuel cells due to low cost, relatively abundant material and suitable catalytic activity [3].Copper (Cu) is one of the most commonly used non-Pt transition metals and is used to manufacture the electrocatalysts that are found in numerous electrochemical systems, such as rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells. In fuel cells field, there are few reports about the electrooxidation of alcohols on the Cu and Cu-based nanoparticles. Hereupon, in this work, a promising electrocatalyst was developed based on a layer process by electropolymerization of methyl orange (MO) on the surface of glassy carbon electrode (GCE) as a proper polymeric framework for deposition of Cu nanoparticles (CuNPs) for the first time. The prepared electrocatalyst was characterized by XRD, SEM, EDX and electrochemical techniques. Then, the cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry approaches were employed to characterize the electrocatalytic activity of the present nanoparticles modified electrodes toward the oxidation of glycerol in 1.0 M NaOH solution. Electrochemical studies demonstrate that this CuNPs/PMO/GCE catalyst could have both superior electrocatalytic activity and stability for glycerol oxidation, confirming that CuNPs/PMO/GCE should be a good material for supporting the catalyst. The results obtained at optimized conditions have highlighted the excellent electrocatalyst activity of CuNPs/PMO/GCE in terms of specific peak current density and onset potential. Also, the CuNPs/PMO/GCE kept initial performances over 100 voltammetric cycles. For CuNPs/PMO/GCE, kinetic parameters such as the electron transfer coefficient (α) and the number of electrons involved in the rate determining step (nα) for oxidation of glycerol at the CuNPs/PMO/GCE surface were calculated.