Nanostructured Polyaniline: An Efficient Support Matrix for Platinum‐Ruthenium Anode Catalyst in Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

Abstract

The quest for an efficient catalyst support material for improved deposition of electrocatalyst nanaoparticles towards application in methanol oxidation reaction has been an active field of research for last few decades. The use of highly expensive, although efficient, platinum‐ruthenium (Pt‐Ru) catalyst demands its minimum loading requirement and maximum utilization. We, herein, propose the potentiality of polyaniline (PAni) nanostructures‐based catalyst support materials towards this utilization aspect. It was realized that the PAni nanowhiskers (NWs) support exhibited better dispersion and higher utilization of the deposited Pt‐Ru nanoparticles, as compared to the PAni nanofibers (NFs) and the commercial Vulcan carbon (C) supports. This led to the exhibition of higher electrocatalytic activity, suppressed catalyst poisoning and better stability by the Pt‐Ru/PAni NWs catalyst system. The charge transfer rates of the catalyst systems were found to be in the order Pt‐Ru/PAni NWs > Pt‐Ru/PAni NFs > Pt‐Ru/C. Moreover, the Pt‐Ru/PAni NWs catalyst system demonstrated the lowest solution resistance and the best performance in a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC).

Nanohybrid layered double hydroxide materials as efficient catalysts for methanol electrooxidation

“…This is likely to be related to the entry of hydroxyl anions inside the catalyst interlayer. 14,42 On the other hand, NiCoCr-LDH hybrid showed a superior current density, which is observable from the results ( Table 2). It is observed that at scan rate of 100 mV s À1 , the current density values were 0.27, 1.48 and 1.63 mA cm À2 for CoCr-LDH, NiCr-LDH and NiCoCr-LDH, respectively.…”

Research Progress on Applications of Polyaniline (PANI) for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion

“…They attributed it to high ionic or electronic CPs, another promising electrode material acknowledged as having high specific capacitance, perfect flexibility, good stability and ease of synthesis, show a fascinating prospect in supercapacitive (pseudocapacitive) electrodes. As mentioned above, PANI has more advantages over the other CPs like ease of synthesis, low cost monomer, high theoretical conductivity (3407 F g −1 ), a wide range of working potential window and good stability, therefore PANI is the most explored material that is used as pseudocapacitive electrodes among CPs [26][27][28][29]. In order to improve its properties, extensive efforts have been made, which are mainly associated with combining PANI with other materials (like carbon-based materials, TMOs).…”

One-Pot Synthesis of 2,5-Diformylfuran from Fructose by Bifunctional Polyaniline-Supported Heteropolyacid Hybrid Catalysts

“…The anchoring of Mo-containing active species onto a suitable organic "support" might retain their high selectivity while endowing an extra catalytic performance derived from the organic "support". Notably, polyaniline (PAN) has recently received particular interest in catalytic applications as a heterogeneous organic support owing to its facile synthesis, air-stable performance, good dispersion of active species, and the pseudo-homogeneous character in organic solvents [20,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. In our group, we found that the functionalized PANs exhibited promising catalytic performance towards the dehydration of fructose into furans [45][46][47].…”