Electrochemical deposition of Pt nanoparticles on CNTs for fuel cell electrode

In order to increase the performance of fuel cell electrode, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were used as support instead of conventional carbon black, and the Pt catalyst was synthesized by using electrochemical deposition (ECD) method which has recently been adopted as a synthetic tool of metal nanoparticles. CNTs used in this paper were grown directly on carbon paper by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of acetylene. Highly dispersed and nano-sized Pt particles were electrochemically deposited on CNTs surface, which would simplify the manufacturing process of membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA). Pt particles on CNTs were investigated by SEM and TEM. The particle size of Pt is less than 2 nm, which is relatively small compared to that of conventional wet impregnated catalyst (2–8 nm). CO chemisorption results show that the amounts of catalytic sites are about three times larger in Pt/CNT prepared by ECD than those in conventional wet-impregnated one. The mass activity of the former catalyst for oxygen reduction is more than three times higher compared to that of the latter one. This paper was presented at the 11th Korea-Japan Symposium on Catatysis held at Seoul, Korea, May 21–24, 2007.