Abstract
Hydrogen fuel cell is a clean green energy device, but it is demanded valid conjugation between catalyst and substrate for generating the effective active site and ion transfer. Here, the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) efficiency was investigated using Pt-embedded zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (Pt@ZIF-8) electrocatalysts. Although the Pt content was only 2.8 wt%, the efficiency was equivalent to the reference catalyst (~ 40 wt% Pt in carbon); The reduction of Pt content improves cost performance and saves resources, making fuel cells more affordable. Furthermore, a flexible substrate consisting of electroconductive sulfonated polypyrrole and TEMPO-oxidized cellulose nanofiber film was found to be effective for embedding Pt@ZIF-8 electrocatalysts, acting as flexible and lightweight electrodes. Moreover, the generated hydrogen easily diffuses through the porous cellulose film. The fabricated electrocatalytic substrates are promising composite materials for hydrogen fuel cells, which consume significantly small amount of noble metal, making the renewable energy production more reasonable.
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Acknowledgments
N.K. was financially supported by National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, for a student scholarship. The authors would like to acknowledge Adrià Perez-Calm and Jonathan Miras, IQAC-CSIC, for their valuable suggestions and their help in the experiments. The authors want to thank NANBIOSIS ICTS and the Nanostructured Liquid Characterization Unit (U12) for SEM observations.
Funding
C.R.-A. is grateful to the financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CTQ2017-84998-P project), the European Regional Development Fund, Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR01778) and the Networking Research Center on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN). Support from the I-LINK 1188 project (CSIC) is also acknowledged.
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NK managed conceptualization, NK, CK worked methodology, investigation, visualization, NK performed writing—original draft the manuscript, TI and CR-A played Supervision, and writing—review and editing the manuscript. CR-A managed funding acquisition.
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Krathumkhet, N., Kao, CY., Imae, T. et al. Electrocatalytic Pt-embedded ZIF-8 on nanocellulose-based flexible conductive electrodes for hydrogen evolution reaction. Cellulose 30, 3185–3200 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-023-05082-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-023-05082-2