Carbon materials have been widely used for energy storage and industrial applications due to their abundant, cheap and eco-friendly.<sup> </sup>In particular, the carbon on based materials have inert, mechanical stability and electro-conductivity thus different forms of carbon fibers, carbon felts, carbon clothes have been using as an electrode for an electrochemical application.&lt;span style="font-size:10.8333px"&gt; &lt;/span&gt;However, due to their intrinsic drawbacks of poor wettability in aqueous solution due to hydrophobicity or low surface area (specifically in carbon felts), several limitations including metal loading problem were observed. Several research efforts studied to change their chemical or physical properties by introducing hydrophilicity or changing the physical structure. The modified carbon materials can be used by itself but when it combined with metals that it often improves the electrochemical catalytic activities. Moreover, the modified chemical or physical structure of the carbon supports often change their carbon’s proton affinity, the interaction of metal particles, and electronic density of metal particles.<br/>Although various surface modifications have been reported to tune the surface area and introduce acidic or basic chemical functional groups on the carbon surface but studying of physicochemical structures and their impact on metal nanoparticles with electrochemical performance toward benzaldehyde have not yet profoundly studied. In fact, carbon supports may not participate in catalytic activity by itself but it often affects catalytic activity by affecting metal catalysts through electron metal and support interaction (EMSI). Therefore, herein, we first obtained three different modification approaches and see physicochemical structures. i.e., acid treatment, carbonization, or plasma treatment. In the carbonization methods, we employed the hard template method to tune the surface area to keep similar functional groups but varying the surface area. Then, palladium nanoparticles (Pd NPs) are synthesized by a wet-impregnation method and followed by thermal heat treatment. The Pd/Modified CFs used for electrochemical reduction of benzaldehyde. In this synthetic procedure, carbon felts (CFs) purposely chose for the electrode due to high electronic conductivity with mechanically stable and catalytic active Pd metal is easy to screen the relationship between functional groups and Pd for electrocatalytic hydrogenation of benzaldehyde.

Enhancing the activity of Pd for carbonyl hydrogenation through functionalization of the carbon support

2019 Fall National Meeting

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