Ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion for synthesis of Pt and PtCo nano-particles
C. Rong, R. Jiang, W. Sarney
Sep 1, 2010
Citations
11
Citations
Journal
Electrochimica Acta
Full text
Semantic Scholar
Key Takeaway Key Takeaway: Ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion synthesis of Pt and PtCo nano-particles increases catalytic peak current for oxygen reduction, enhancing their performance compared to normal chemical methods.
Abstract
Abstract Several wet chemical methods were examined for synthesis of Pt and PtCo nano-particles, including normal chemical synthesis, micro-emulsion synthesis, and ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion synthesis. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and cyclic voltammetry (CV) were used for the characterization. The PtCo synthesized with ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion showed a uniform particle size distribution. We can control the particle size from 17 nm to 3 nm by varying the synthetic environment, such as the water/oil ratio, water/surfactant ratio, reactant concentration, and pH value in water phase. The CV results showed that by applying ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion for synthesis of PtCo catalyst, the catalytic peak current for oxygen reduction increased 15% over the PtCo synthesized by micro-emulsion but without applying ultrasound in the synthetic environment, and 47% over the PtCo synthesized by normal chemical method. The catalytic peak potential for the PtCo synthesized with ultrasound-assisted micro-emulsion had 30 mV positive shift for O 2 reduction in comparison with that synthesized by micro-emulsion without applying ultrasound, and 100 mV positive shift in comparison with that synthesized by normal chemical method.