High-activity PtRuPd/C catalyst for direct dimethyl ether fuel cells

Qing Li; Xiaodong Wen; Gang Wu; Hoon T Chung; Rui Gao; Piotr Zelenay

doi:10.1002/anie.201500454

High-activity PtRuPd/C catalyst for direct dimethyl ether fuel cells

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2015 Jun 22;54(26):7524-8. doi: 10.1002/anie.201500454. Epub 2015 May 12.

Authors

Qing Li¹, Xiaodong Wen^{2

3

4}, Gang Wu^{1

5}, Hoon T Chung¹, Rui Gao^{6

3}, Piotr Zelenay⁷

Affiliations

¹ Materials Physics and Applications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (USA).
² Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (USA).
³ Synfuels China, Beijing 100195 (PR China).
⁴ Present address: State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 165, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030001 (PR China).
⁵ Present address: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260 (USA).
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 165, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030001 (PR China).
⁷ Materials Physics and Applications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (USA). zelenay@lanl.gov.

PMID: 25967867
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201500454

Abstract

Dimethyl ether (DME) has been considered as a promising alternative fuel for direct-feed fuel cells but lack of an efficient DME oxidation electrocatalyst has remained the challenge for the commercialization of the direct DME fuel cell. The commonly studied binary PtRu catalyst shows much lower activity in DME than methanol oxidation. In this work, guided by density functional theory (DFT) calculation, a ternary carbon-supported PtRuPd catalyst was designed and synthesized for DME electrooxidation. DFT calculations indicated that Pd in the ternary PtRuPd catalyst is capable of significantly decreasing the activation energy of the CO and CH bond scission during the oxidation process. As evidenced by both electrochemical measurements in an aqueous electrolyte and polymer-electrolyte fuel cell testing, the ternary catalyst shows much higher activity (two-fold enhancement at 0.5 V in fuel cells) than the state-of-the-art binary Pt50 Ru50 /C catalyst (HiSPEC 12100).

Keywords: dimethyl ether; electrochemical oxidation; fuel cells; heterogeneous catalysis; nanoparticles.