Structural Effects of Tungsten Oxide Electro-Catalyst Towards High Stable CO Tolerance Mechanism

摘要

In this work, a cost effective, facile and rational synthesis of two different nanostructures including nanosphere shaped and nanorod sized tungsten oxide nanomaterials. The prepared nanoparticles were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopic analyses, energy dispersive spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The XRD result confirms that the nanoparticles have a polycrystalline nature with well-developed monoclinic crystalline structure. The microscopic images evidently confirm the nanosphere shaped and nanorods sized WO3 samples. Further the purity and stoichiometry amount of chemical compositions were confirmed by the EDS spectra. The modes of vibrations of the WO3 nanoparticles were identified by Raman spectroscopy. From these structural investigations, it is evidently showing that the morphologies of the final products can be tuned via synthesis process. In addition, the WO3 nanosphere exhibited excellent long-term durability and CO tolerance against the high quality Pt/C catalyst. To our best of knowledge, this is the first report of the use of WO3 nanocrystals that act as CO2 tolerance catalysts with high stability. The enhanced activity of the WO3 nanosphere is due mainly to the higher structural openness in WO3 and this makes the WO3 nanosphere a good candidate for high-performance non-precious metal-based electrocatalysts with low cost and high efficiency for electrochemical energy conversion.