Pt-based/CNT alloy nanoparticles composite for high performance direct methanol fuel cell

Abstract

Recently, direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) attracts a lot of interests as the most suitable and promising option for portable devices due to its characteristics such as low working temperature, high energy-conversion efficiency and low emission of pollutant. However, it still has the problem, slow reaction and short life time due to CO poisioning of the catalyst and high cost of the platinum catalyst. Therefore, to overcome these problems, many researchers have been conducted to develop Pt-based alloy nano-particles catalysts to increase its reactive surface area and reduce the CO poisoning phenomena. Here, we demonstrated novel method for the formation of alloy nanoparticles on carbon nanotube (CNT) by flash light irradiation. The metal layers were sputtered on CNT by E-beam evaporator and flash light was irradiated on it (Fig.1.). The flash light provides enough energy to melt the metal layers followed by forming of metal alloy nanoparticles on CNT. It is noteworthy that the irradiated flash light could melt the metal layer without damage on CNT, which may come from the fact that the absorbed light energy to the metal layers are mainly consumed as latent heat for the phase transformation (solid to liquid) of the metal layer before it is transferred to CNT.