The feasibility of renewable energy technology, hydrogen production by water electrolysis, depends on the design of efficient and durable electrocatalyst composed of earth-abundant elements. Herein, a highly active and stable nonmetallic electrocatalyst, nitrogen doped hexagonal carbon (NHC), was developed for hydrogen production. It exhibited high activity for hydrogen evolution with a low ove...

The uptake of precious metals from electronic waste is of environmental significance and potential commercial value. A facile bioreductive synthesis is described for Au nanoparticles (ca. 20 nm) supported on N-doped carbon (Au@NC), which was derived from Au/Pycnoporus sanguineus cells. The interface and charge transport between Au and N-doped carbon were confirmed by HRTEM and XPS. Au@NC was em...

In this study PtFeCo ternary alloys nanoparticles of three dimentional (3D) rhombus shapes dispersed on graphene nanosheets (PtFeCo/Gr) were successfully prepared and studied as electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in polymer-electrolyte fuel cells. A combination of analytical techniques including powder X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectra, inductively coupled plasma-...

Insufficient durability and catalytic activity of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) electrocatalyst are key issues that have to be solved for the practical application of low temperature fuel cell. This paper introduces a new catalyst design strategy using N-anchor to promote the corrosion resistance of electrocatalyst. The as-synthesized N-Pt3Fe1/C shows a high electrocatalytic activity and a su...

A study was carried out to characterize Ni-Co-PVC and Ni-Cu-PVC composite materials prepared by mechanical alloying technique (MAT) using SEM, EDS and electrochemical test. Composite materials were prepared by mixing together 95% of metal powder (Ni+Co or Ni+Cu) with 5% PVC. PVC was used as a binder and tetrahydrofuran (THF) was used as a solvent in composite material preparation. Based on the ...

In this paper, raspberry hollow Pd nanospheres (HPNs)-decorated carbon nanotube (CNT) was developed for electro-oxidation of methanol, ethanol, and formic acid in alkaline media. The electrocatalyst was fabricated simply by attaching HPNs onto the surface of CNT which had been functionalized by polymer wrapping. The as-prepared HPN-CNTs (CHPNs) were characterized by transmission electron micros...

Most Li-O2 batteries suffer from sluggish kinetics during oxygen evolution reactions (OERs). To overcome this drawback, we take the lesson from other catalysis researches that showed improved catalytic activities by employing metal alloy catalysts. Such research effort has led us to find Pt3Co nanoparticles as an effective OER catalyst in Li-O2 batteries. The superior catalytic activity was ref...

We report the first observation of carbon-induced nanofaceting of a Re single crystal and its application in synthesizing a nanostructured model Pt electrocatalyst investigated using multiple surface science techniques, including low-energy electron diffraction, Auger electron spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, low-energy ion scattering, and scanning tunneling microscopy, combined ...

In this report, we describe the preparation and electrochemical characterization of a Pt electrocatalyst, which was synthesized from hexachloroplatinic acid, using the incipient wetness impregnation method. This carbon mesoporous materials (Pt-CMMs) electrocatalyst was used for catalyzing the oxidation of methanol and its oxygen-reduction reaction. The electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol was...