Study of catalyst layer chemistry of Metal-Nitrogen-Carbon catalysts for oxygen reduction

What is it about?

The structure-to-property relationships are in the core of attempts to create electrodes with the best performance. For alternative platinum-group-free electrocatalysts of oxygen reduction, the studies of relationships between structure and performance are mostly reported on the level of catalysts themselves. However, it is critically important to understand the chemistry of catalysts layers as distribution of active sites and ionomer morphology has immediate effect of activity. In this paper we are evaluating how the chemistry of catalysts themselves affects interaction with Nafion ionomer; how these interactions result in different chemical structures of catalyst layers and how these structures affect the fuel cell performance. We use XPS to probe structure of catalyst layers and DFT to model interactions of nafion-fragments with different types of nitrogen within graphene-like network.

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Why is it important?

We derive very important relationship between the chemistry of catalyst that results in optimized structure of catalyst layer on the cathode. This knowledge allows optimizing the structure of the catalysts that produces the best performing electrodes for fuel cells.

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