The cold plasma techniques are widely applied to create new materials possessing unique properties, which cannot be prepared by any other methods. "mong the many interesting substances produced with the participation of cold plasma, a special place is occupied by materials with catalytic properties. The chapter gives a brief review of various cold plasma methods used for the preparation of catalytic materials from the plasma modification of conventional catalysts via plasma-enhanced classical synthesis of catalysts to the advanced thin catalytic films fabricated by plasma sputtering processes but primarily by plasma deposition from metalorganic precursors PECVD . Recently, the catalytic films have attracted considerable attention due to the possibility of depositing them as very thin coatings on virtually all supports without any change in their geometry. Such coatings open the way for new reactor designs, so-called structured reactors, designated for various chemical processes. They can also be used as catalytic deposit on the surface of electrodes for fuel cells and photoelectrodes for water splitting processes. Recent developments in this field and further prospects for thin catalytic films are discussed, all the more so because it is one of the main areas of research in our department.Keywords: Catalysts, plasma treatment, PECVD, structured reactors, fuel cells, water splitting
. IntroductionFor a long time, plasma techniques have been used in the creation of new materials possessing unique properties, which cannot be fabricated by other methods. " particularly important technique, giving plenty of possibilities, is the plasma deposition of entirely new, advanced materials in the form of solid coatings having unusual molecular structure and sophisticated nanomorphology. The plasma processes can also be used to modify conventional materials through treating them during or after "classical" synthesis, which generally leads to new © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.substances with disparate properties, often more suitable than those of the unmodified materials."mong the many interesting products fabricated by plasma techniques, materials with catalytic properties occupy a special place. There exist a lot of catalytic reactions, for example, combustion of organic volatile compounds, CO methanation, Fischer Tropsch synthesis, water photo-splitting, fuel cell electrode processes, and many others, which challenge chemists all over the world to seek better catalysts or more effective catalyst preparation methods. It seems that the plasma techniques pave the way for novel solutions in this field.In general, plasma techniques used in the preparation of catalysts can be categorized into one of two groups depending on the plasma type thermal equilibrium pl...
