Investigation of carbon supported Au–Ni bimetallic nanoparticles as electrocatalyst for direct borohydride fuel cell

The carbon supported Au80Ni20, Au58Ni42 and Au41Ni59 nanoparticles for the application of direct borohydride-hydrogen peroxide fuel cell (DBHFC) are synthesized in a sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT) reverse micelle system. The physical and electrochemical properties are investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, chronopotentiometry and fuel cell test. The TEM results reveal that the Au–Ni bimetallic particles are uniformly dispersed on carbon with narrow size distribution and regular spherical shape. The average size of the particles is about 3 nm. The electrochemical measurements show that Au–Ni bimetallic particles can apparently promote the electrode kinetics of BH4− oxidation. The DBHFCs using carbon supported Au–Ni bimetallic particles as anode electrocatalysts are fabricated. The results show that the performance of DBHFC using Au58Ni42/C as anode electrocatalyst excels markedly to the others, and the maximum power density of 45.74 mW cm−2 is obtained at 20 °C.