Morphological studies on the agglomeration of FeCo supported nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide catalyst prepared at varying annealing temperature
One of the barriers to the large-scale commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is the high-priced of noble metals such as platinum (Pt). Therefore, in this paper, bimetallic electrocatalyst FeCo supported nitrogen-doped reduced graphene oxide (FeCo-NG) for oxygen reduct...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2018
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/20528/1/5.pdf http://journalarticle.ukm.my/20528/ https://www.ukm.my/jkukm/si-1-1-2018/ |
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| Summary: | One of the barriers to the large-scale commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) is the high-priced
of noble metals such as platinum (Pt). Therefore, in this paper, bimetallic electrocatalyst FeCo supported nitrogen-doped
reduced graphene oxide (FeCo-NG) for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is proposed and has been successfully prepared
through annealing of a mixture containing Fe, Co salts, dicyandiamide (DCDA) and graphene oxide (GO). The starting
material GO appeared to be in multilayer sheets through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) analysis. Due to the high annealing temperature and the absence of the surfactant, agglomeration of FeCo
nanoparticles was observed from the morphology analysis. The macrostructure size of the metals particles was observed to
be increased over temperature. As the temperature increases, the agglomeration gets more intense because of the increased
of van der Waals cohesive forces between the nanoparticles. In addition, the weak electrostatic interaction between the
metal cations with the nitrogen and the GO sheets could also be the cause of the agglomeration. The weak electrostatic
interaction caused the nanoparticles (Fe and Co) not attracted onto the GO sheets thus inhibit the reduction of FeCo and
GO to occur in situ simultaneously. It is believed that the agglomeration of the electrocatalyst FeCo-NG could results to
poor electrocatalytic activity of PEMFC. |
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