Fabrication of polyoxometalate-modified palladium–nickel/reduced graphene oxide alloy catalysts for enhanced oxygen reduction reaction activity
Date
2021Author
Sanij, Fereshteh Dehghani
Balakrishnan, Prabhuraj
Khotseng, Lindiwe
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Designing advanced nanocatalysts for effectively catalyzing the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is of great
importance for practical applications of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). In this work, the reduced
graphene oxide (rGO)-supported palladium–nickel (Pd–Ni/rGO) alloy modified by the novel
polyoxometalate (POM) with Keggin structure (Pd–Ni/rGO-POM) is efficiently fabricated via an
impregnation technique. The physical characterizations such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform
infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Raman spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma optical emission
spectroscopy (ICP-OES), field emission scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive Xray spectroscopy (FESEM-EDX), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are utilized to confirm the
structure, morphology, and chemical composition of the fabricated samples. The XRD results verify the
formation of the POM-modified Pd8Ni2/rGO alloy electro-catalyst with the face-centered-cubic (fcc)
structure and average crystallite size of 5.54 nm.