New oxygen cathodes for fuel cells with organic fuels

Electroreduction of oxygen at tungsten oxide modified carbon-supported RuSex nanoparticles

“…Bi-component ruthenium-selenium (RuSe x ) nanoparticles can be viewed as a promising alternative to Pt and Pt-alloy based cathode materials. Contrary to Pt type systems, the catalysts utilizing RuSe x have been reported to be fully methanol tolerant [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. While bare Ru metal itself is a poor oxygen reduction catalyst, the addition of Se exhibits a profound activating effect.…”

Highly methanol-tolerant non-precious metal cathode catalysts for direct methanol fuel cell

“…Several groups showed that templated CoTMPP-based ORR catalysts, supported on various carbon or silica templates and then heat-treated, are active in oxygen reduction but not methanol oxidation [9][10][11][12]. In a recent report from our groups, a non-PGM cathode catalyst was demonstrated, capable of outperforming a state-of-the-art Pt-black catalyst in DMFCs operated on concentrated methanol (∼5 M) [12].…”

“…To date, non-PGM cathode catalysis research has focused on three main groups of compounds with particularly good promise: inorganic oxides [4][5][6], metal selenides [7,8], and pyrolyzed N 4 -transition metal macrocycles and N 4 -metal chelates of Fe or Co [9][10][11][12]. Several groups showed that templated CoTMPP-based ORR catalysts, supported on various carbon or silica templates and then heat-treated, are active in oxygen reduction but not methanol oxidation [9][10][11][12].…”

Application of nitrogen-rich amino acids to active site generation in oxygen reduction catalyst

“…atoms (Fe-N x moiety) embedded on the surface as the active site have been most extensively studied and are one of the promising candidates for the active and reliable catalyst . Several methods have been reported to produce the carbon materials with the Fe-N x active site: (a) heat treatment of a complex usually adsorbed on carbon materials, in which Fe is coordinated by nitrogen atoms in the ligands, such as porphyrins [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], phthalocyanine [30,31], phenanthroline [32], cynanide [33]; (b) heat treatment of a mixture of Fe salts and a nitrogen-containing polymer such as polypyrrole and polyacrylonitrile with or without carbon black [34][35][36][37][38]; (c) heat treatment of the Fe salts supported on carbon materials in NH 3 or CH 3 CN gases [25,28,39,40]; (d) heat treatment of the Fe salts loaded on carbon materials which are enriched with nitrogen on the surface or formed by carbonization in the NH 3 gas [25,26,41]. We recently formed the noble-metal-free cathode catalysts by carbonizing catalase and hemoglobin [42][43][44].…”