A New Composite Support for Pd Catalysts for Ethylene Glycol Electrooxidation in Alkaline Solution: Effect of (Ru,Sn)O2 solid solution

In this paper, RuO2-SnO2 binary oxides were prepared using a hydrothermal approach and added to Vulcan XC-72 carbon black as new support material for Pd. The X-ray diffraction, Transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectronic spectra results show that the addition of binary oxides leads to the formation of (Ru,Sn)O2 solid solution in Pd/C catalyst and reduces the particle size of Pd particles due to the anchoring effect. In addition, the electrochemical CO-striping measurement reveals that the Pd/RuO2-SnO2/C catalyst exhibits the largest electrochemical active surface and the best CO tolerance. Moreover, cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry tests demonstrate that the Pd/RuO2-SnO2/C catalyst possesses a much higher specific activity (4.4 mA cm−2) than that of the Pd/C catalyst (3.2 mA cm−2) towards ethylene glycol electrooxidation in alkaline media, and better stability as well. These results support the suitability of Pd/RuO2-SnO2/C catalyst developed in this work as a promising candidate for direct alcohol fuel cells (DAFCs) application.