ENHANCED ELECTROCATALYTIC ACTIVITY OF PLATINUM NANOCLUSTERS LOADED ON THE POROUS N-DOPED CARBON LAYER COATED CARBON NANOTUBES

摘要

The high cost of precious catalysts used for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is still one of the main problems hindering the commercial application of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In order to solve it, the numerous researches have been focusing on two aspects as follow: a) enhancing the activity and durability of precious metal catalysts for ORR to decrease catalysts cost, b) developing non-precious metal catalysts or metal-free catalysts. In both aspects above, carbon nanotubes have been considering as promising materials to improve the ORR performance of catalysts. Therefore, considerable efforts have been made to utilize the unique properties of CNTs, and especially to tune their structure and properties for electro-catalysts application.