The high price of noble metal based electrocatalyst for FC applications has limited their application in macro scale production. Since 55% of the total cost is directly linked to the electrode component, actually the use of non-noble catalysts with transition metals, chelats, and macrocycle molecules as a catalyst precursor is deeply investigated. Graphene is a good candidate for FC support due to its high specific surface area, high thermal stability, high conductivity and strong mechanical strength. A high quality graphene implies low density defects: in such condition the graphene behaves as a metal with high constant electron mobility [1]. Graphene oxide (GO) is usually manufactured by breaking graphite into separate sheets of oxidized graphene via acid intercalation, oxidation and subsequently physical sonication to obtain GO nanosheets. Oxygen containing groups of graphene can serve as an active site for increasing the density of oxygen at the electrode interface, to better catalyze the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) [2,3].In this work, the graphene structure was doped with nitrogen by employing N-containing macromolecule. GO was prepared and reduced (RGO) via a microwave heat treatment. Then nitrogen was deposited via an impregnation procedure of the RGO with iron acetate and tripyridyl-s-tri-trazine (TPTZ).

Non noble electrocatalysts supported on graphene sheets for oxygen reduction reaction

246th National Meeting (2013)

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