Electrochemical Growth of Gold Nanostructures on Carbon Paper for Alkaline Direct Glucose Fuel Cell Application

• Main Authors: Tung, Szu-Ping, 童思頻
• Other Authors: Chiu, Hsin-Tien
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12851174813216889572

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 應用化學系碩博士班 === 99 === Direct glucose fuel cells (DGFC) have attracted interest as one of the most promising power sources because glucose is abundant in nature, non-toxic, non-flammable, cheap and easy to store. It allows the use of inexpensive non-platinum metal catalysts such as gold, silver and nickel. Especially, Au is considered one of the promising non-Pt fuel cell catalysts as its good activity toward glucose oxidation in alkaline media. In this work, we demonstrated nanostructured Au material deposited on carbon papers can be used for direct alkaline glucose fuel cell. Au nanocorals and nanoparticles were grown on carbon papers via a simple two-electrode electrochemical deposition process by reducing HAuCl4 under constant potentials in mixtures containing cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) and/or NaNO3. Electrochemical characterizations showed that the nanocoral electrode exhibited high surface area and high electrocatalytic activity towards glucose oxidation in alkaline media. These Au nanostructures were employed as the anodes and assembled with anion exchange membranes and Pt cathodes for alkaline direct glucose fuel cell (DGFC) investigations. Open-circuit voltages (OCV) of the Au nanocoral and nanoparticle electrodes were 0.64 V and 0.61 V, and their maximum power densities were 0.847 mW/cm2 and 0.336 mW/cm2, respectively. The cells showed stable output over 5 h with a small decrease in OCV (6.9 %). The electrodes could be refreshed after electrochemical reduction steps. Furthermore, we examined some monosaccharides and disaccharides as anodic fuel by cyclic voltammetry and maltose was selected as fuel for cell test. The polarization curve showed OCV of 0.65 V and the short-circuit current density of 5.70 mA/cm2.