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The Mixture of Nanoparticles of RuO2 and Pt Supported on Ti as an Efficient Catalyst for Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cell

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Abstract

An active coating, composed of a mixture of nanocrystals of RuO2 with the rutile structure and nanocrystals of metal Pt, was thermally synthetized on a titanium substrate. Cyclic voltammograms and polarization curves showed that the catalytic activity of the coating for the formic acid oxidation in an acidic solution increased with an increase in the RuO2 content, reaching the maximum value at 50 mol % RuO2. Additionally, further increase in the RuO2 content resulted in a decline of the catalytic activity. The catalytic effect was attributed to a bifunctional mechanism and an electronic effect. The bifunctional mechanism had a dominant role and was based on the fact that Ru–OH species were formed on Ru atoms of RuO2 at more negative potentials than on Pt. Those species oxidized the adsorbed COad and HCOOad—species on adjacent Pt atoms of clusters of metal Pt and thus discharge them to oxidize new HCOOH molecules.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia through project no. 172 057.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint Laboratory for Advanced Materials of SASA, Section for Amorphous Systems, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Čačak, University of Kragujevac, 32000, Čačak, Serbia

    Miroslav Spasojević & Lenka Ribić-Zelenović

  2. Innovation Center of the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia

    Milica Spasojević

  3. Institute of Technical Sciences SASA, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia

    Tomislav Trišović

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  1. Miroslav Spasojević
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  2. Lenka Ribić-Zelenović
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Correspondence to Milica Spasojević.

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Miroslav Spasojević, Ribić-Zelenović, L., Spasojević, M. et al. The Mixture of Nanoparticles of RuO2 and Pt Supported on Ti as an Efficient Catalyst for Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cell. Russ J Electrochem 55, 1350–1359 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1023193519120164

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