Pulse electrodeposited Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite electrode as electrocatalysts for ethanol electro-oxidation

• Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite electrodes are prepared from sulphamate solutions using pulse method.
• Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposites are characterized with SEM, EDAX, XRD and AFM.
• Electrocatalytic activity of the Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite electrodes are studied using Cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry techniques.

In this work, pure Ni and Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposites are deposited on mild steel surface using nickel sulphamate electrolyte by pulse electrodeposition method. The effect of Gd2O3 nano particles concentration on the preferred orientation of Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite was studied by X-ray diffractrometer. The surface morphology, surface topography and chemical composition of deposited pure Ni and Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX) respectively. The electrocatalytic activity of the pure Ni and Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite electrodes for the electro-oxidation of ethanol was studied by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The results showed that, Ni-Gd2O3 nanocomposite electrode increases the electrocatalytic activity towards ethanol electro-oxidation compared with pure Ni. However, the chronoamperometry experiments revealed that the stability of the Ni-Gd2O3 composite electrodes with time is found to be equivalent to pure Ni electrode.