Effect of heat treatment on the activity and stability of carbon supported PtMo alloy electrocatalysts for hydrogen oxidation in proton exchange membrane fuel cells

Abstract

The effect of heat treatment on the activity, stability and CO tolerance of PtMo/C catalysts was studied, due to their applicability in the anode of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). To this purpose, a carbon supported PtMo (60:40) alloy electrocatalyst was synthesized by the formic acid reduction method, and samples of this catalyst were heat-treated at various temperatures ranging between 400 and 700 °C. The samples were characterized by temperature programmed reduction (TPR), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), cyclic voltammetry (CV), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and wavelength dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS). Cyclic voltammetry was used to study the stability, and polarization curves were used to investigate the performance of all materials as CO tolerant anode on a PEM single cell text fixture. The catalyst treated at 600 °C, for which the average crystallite size was 16.7 nm, showed the highest hydrogen oxidation activity in the presence of CO, giving an overpotential induced by CO contamination of 100 mV at 1 Acm−2. This catalyst also showed a better stability up to 5000 potential cycles of cyclic voltammetry, as compared to the untreated catalyst. CV, SEM and WDS results indicated that a partial dissolution of Mo and its migration/diffusion from the anode to the cathode occurs during the single cell cycling. Polarization results showed that the catalytic activity and the stability can be improved by a heat treatment, in spite of a growth of the catalyst particles.