Non-precious nanostructured materials by electrospinning and their applications for oxygen reduction in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Electrospun Polyacrylonitrile‐Derived Co or Fe Containing Nanofibre Catalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction at the Alkaline Membrane Fuel Cell Cathode

“…[1] In addition, they have also been studied as electrode and membrane materials in energy production, conversion and storage devices (e. g. supercapacitors, batteries, solar cells, fuel cells). [1][2][3][4]8,9] The fuel cells are one of the potential alternative energy conversion devices for the worldwide demand for cleaner energy. [8,10,11] In a fuel cell, the chemical energy is converted into electrical energy via electrochemical oxidation of the fuel (e. g. H 2 ) at the anode.…”

“…[8,9] Simultaneously, O 2 is electroreduced at the fuel cell cathode and the sluggish kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is one of the limiting factors of the device performance. [4,10] Pt nanoparticles supported on high-surface-area carbon (Pt/C) are the state-of-the-art catalysts for ORR as the O 2 reduction process starts at relatively low overpotential and proceeds via a favourable 4e À pathway on this electrocatalyst material. [10] Due to the limited resources, high cost and easy poisoning, the Pt/C catalysts are not suitable for wide-range fuel cell applications and an alternative nonprecious metal catalyst (NPMC) is needed.…”

“…[10] Due to the limited resources, high cost and easy poisoning, the Pt/C catalysts are not suitable for wide-range fuel cell applications and an alternative nonprecious metal catalyst (NPMC) is needed. [4,12] NPMC materials based on electrospun carbon nanofibres (CNF) have been quite thoroughly studied for the ORR during the last decade. [1,4,8,13] Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is very often used as a carbon precursor polymer for this application as the nitrogen is already present in its structure that is favourable in the nitrogen doping of the catalyst point of view.…”

Recent advances in hybrid sodium–air batteries

“…Compared with traditional wet-chemistry methods, electrospinning is a simple and effective technology that offers greater advantages in the design of materials structure and morphology without using any template [211,212], having applications in biomedical materials, filtration and protection, catalysis, energy, food engineering, cosmetics and polymer electrolyte membrane in fuel cell [213][214][215]. Generally, the structures and morphologies of products are highly dependent on the molecular weights of the polymer, solution properties (concentration, viscosity, conductivity, surface tension, and liquid flow), electromotive force, distance between capillary and collection screen, and environmental parameters (temperature, humidity, and indoor air flow rate) [216][217][218].…”

Electrospun Nanomaterials for Energy Applications: Recent Advances

“…Of course, also electrospun catalysts able to catalyze the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions without the aid of light deserve to be mentioned, as well as ENMs utilized in other technologies for clean energy production, such as fuel cells (see f.i. [243][244][245][246]) and solar cells (see f.i. [247][248][249][250]).…”