Investigation of carbon supported Pd-Cu nanoparticles as anode catalysts for direct borohydride fuel cell

Carbon supported Pd and bimetallic Pd-Cu nanoparticles with different compositions are prepared by a modified polyol method and used as anode catalysts for direct borohydride fuel cell (DBFC). The physical and electrochemical properties of the as-prepared electrocatalysts are investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), ICP-AES, cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA), and fuel cell experiments. The results show that the carbon supported Pd-Cu bimetallic catalysts have much higher catalytic activity for the direct oxidation of BH4− than the carbon supported pure nanosized Pd catalyst, especially the Pd50Cu50/C catalyst presents the highest catalytic activity among all as-prepared catalysts, and the DBFC using Pd50Cu50/C as anode catalyst and Pt/C as cathode catalyst gives the best performance, and the maximum power density is 98 mW cm−2 at a current density of 223 mA cm−2 at 60 °C.