PdAuAg alloy nanoparticles on nickel foam as anode for passive air-breathing formate fuel cell

Abstract

A passive air-breathing formate fuel cell with PdAuAg alloy nanoparticles supported on the carbon nanotube (CNT) pasted on nickel foam (NF) as anode is reported in this work. With optimization, a maximum power density of 16 mW cm-2 with PdAuAg/CNT on NF as anode is achieved, which is 2.2 time of that achieved by using commercial Pd/C on NF (7.3 mW cm-2). Furthermore, the cell with PdAuAg/CNT on NF as anode can steadily discharge at 5 mA cm-2 for more than 28 h continuously. This is, to our knowledge, the best performance of passive air-breathing formate fuel cells reported so far and PdAuAg/CNT on NF as anode can be considered as the state-of-the-art for the passive air-breathing formate fuel cell. These results suggested that the PdAuAg/CNT catalyst probably provides an alternative avenue for developing the anode electrocatalysts for passive air-breathing formate fuel cell applications.