A novel approach to pulsed laser deposition of platinum catalyst on carbon particles for use in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

• Bogusław Budner,
• Wojciech Tokarz,
• Sławomir Dyjak,
• Andrzej Czerwiński,
• Bartosz Bartosewicz and
• Bartłomiej Jankiewicz

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2023, 14, 190–204, doi:10.3762/bjnano.14.19

• to deposit Pt for the cathode of PEM fuel cells only in a few studies, and in all of them only on gas diffusion layers of carbon fabric or on proton conductive Nafion membrane [27][32][33]. According to our knowledge, no studies have been reported on the PLD deposition of Pt catalyst on carbon

• catalyst containing 20 wt % Pt deposited on Vulcan XC-72R (Fuel Cell Store, United States) subjected to the same method as the cathode layer by painting to the opposite side of the Nafion membrane (Nafion™ 112, DuPont, United States). The anode and cathode ink were prepared using an ultrasonic cannon (750

Progress and innovation of nanostructured sulfur cathodes and metal-free anodes for room-temperature Na–S batteries

• Marina Tabuyo-Martínez,
• Bernd Wicklein and
• Pilar Aranda

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2021, 12, 995–1020, doi:10.3762/bjnano.12.75

• –Nafion membrane. Using this barrier, the capacity retention could be improved to 250 mAh·g−1 after 100 cycles. In spite of the improvement, the capacity value is still low because of the low Na+ diffusivity through the membrane and the insulating nature of Al2O3. Another approach to stable catholytes is

Multicomponent bionanocomposites based on clay nanoarchitectures for electrochemical devices

• Giulia Lo Dico,
• Bernd Wicklein,
• Lorenzo Lisuzzo,
• Giuseppe Lazzara,
• Pilar Aranda and
• Eduardo Ruiz-Hitzky

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1303–1315, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.129

• electron transfer process from the enzyme to the electrode interface [70]. Therefore, in a preliminary assay, Foam-GOx was tested in the presence of Fe(CN6)4− as mediator and separated from the cathode chamber by a Nafion® membrane. A power density of 565 µW·cm−3 and 31 µW·cm−2 was generated (Figure S11

Alloyed Pt₃M (M = Co, Ni) nanoparticles supported on S- and N-doped carbon nanotubes for the oxygen reduction reaction

• Stéphane Louisia,
• Yohann R. J. Thomas,
• Pierre Lecante,
• Marie Heitzmann,
• M. Rosa Axet,
• Pierre-André Jacques and
• Philippe Serp

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2019, 10, 1251–1269, doi:10.3762/bjnano.10.125

Comprehensive characterization and understanding of micro-fuel cells operating at high methanol concentrations

• Aldo S. Gago,
• Juan-Pablo Esquivel,
• Neus Sabaté,
• Joaquín Santander and
• Nicolas Alonso-Vante

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 2000–2006, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.203

• electrode catalyst takes to get flooded and the catalyst to get eventually poisoned by the fuel that diffuses through the Nafion® membrane of the MEA, the so-called “fuel crossover” effect [32]. The highest open circuit voltage (OCV) is attained only a few seconds after the fuel is added. The cathode

Materials and characterization techniques for high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

• Roswitha Zeis

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2015, 6, 68–83, doi:10.3762/bjnano.6.8

• % humidified. At temperatures above 100 °C and under ambient pressure, water will evaporate instantly from the membrane. Under such conditions the Nafion membrane is a complete insulator. To avoid this problem in HT-PEMFCs, water is replaced with a less volatile liquid such as phosphoric acid (H3PO4

Liquid fuel cells

• Grigorii L. Soloveichik

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1399–1418, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.153

• poisoning, another approach is to increase the operation temperature. To this end, a composite silica/Nafion® membrane was used at 145 °C to reach a maximum power density 110 mW/cm2 with 1 M EtOH feed [70]. Under these conditions CO2 becomes the major product along with a smaller amount of acetaldehyde

Trade-offs in sensitivity and sampling depth in bimodal atomic force microscopy and comparison to the trimodal case

• Babak Eslami,
• Daniel Ebeling and
• Santiago D. Solares

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1144–1151, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.125

• images, respectively, of a Nafion® membrane acquired in the attractive regime; (c) and (d) corresponding images acquired in the repulsive regime. The scale bar is 100 nm. The morphology of the region in the dashed rectangle in (a) is discussed below in Figure 6. The free oscillation amplitude in both

• ) is a consequence of the non-steady state behavior of multi-eigenmode oscillations [9][22]. Bimodal experiments with varying second eigenmode amplitude for a Nafion® membrane (the images correspond to the lower portion of those shown in Figure 1). The left and right columns provide, respectively, the

Design criteria for stable Pt/C fuel cell catalysts

• Josef C. Meier,
• Carolina Galeano,
• Ioannis Katsounaros,
• Jonathon Witte,
• Hans J. Bongard,
• Angel A. Topalov,
• Claudio Baldizzone,
• Stefano Mezzavilla,
• Ferdi Schüth and
• Karl J. J. Mayrhofer

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 44–67, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.5

Large-scale atomistic and quantum-mechanical simulations of a Nafion membrane: Morphology, proton solvation and charge transport

• Pavel V. Komarov,
• Pavel G. Khalatur and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 567–587, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.65

• Department, Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia 10.3762/bjnano.4.65 Abstract Atomistic and first-principles molecular dynamics simulations are employed to investigate the structure formation in a hydrated Nafion membrane and the solvation and transport of protons in the water channel of the

• -conducting hydrophilic channel within the Nafion membrane and studied it with quantum molecular dynamics. The extensive 120 ps-long density functional theory (DFT)-based simulations of charge migration in the 1200-atom model of the nanochannel consisting of Nafion chains and water molecules allowed us to

• observe the bimodality of the van Hove autocorrelation function, which provides the direct evidence of the Grotthuss bond-exchange (hopping) mechanism as a significant contributor to the proton conductivity. Keywords: atomistic simulation; morphology; Nafion membrane; proton transport; quantum molecular

Glassy carbon electrodes modified with multiwalled carbon nanotubes for the determination of ascorbic acid by square-wave voltammetry

• Sushil Kumar and
• Victoria Vicente-Beckett

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 388–396, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.45

• suggests that at the higher concentrations the MWCNTs aggregated on the GCE could not be efficiently retained by the Nafion membrane, leading to a rather unstable layer structure [23][24]. Therefore, 0.6 mg/mL MWCNTs was employed in further SWV experiments. With the MWCNT concentration fixed at 0.6 mg/mL

• concentration was apparently unable to keep the MWCNTs attached to the GCE, whereas at the highest concentration the Nafion membrane was probably too thick with the result that it inhibited access of the analyte to the electrode. Further electroanalytical experiments therefore used GCE modified with 0.6 mg/mL

• acid is present in a relatively large proportion (estimated to be about 72% at pH 3.7 for pKa1 = 4.10 and pKa2 = 11.79 [25]), making it compatible with the cation-exchange nature of the Nafion film; pH much higher than pKa1 would produce more anionic AA, which would be repelled by the Nafion membrane