Platinum catalysts supported on Nafion functionalized carbon black for fuel cell application

We report a high performance supported Pt catalyst, in which a perfluorosulfonic acid (Nafion) functionalized carbon black is used as support. The catalyst is characterized by infrared spectroscopy (IR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The TEM image shows that the active Pt component is in nanoparticles and highly dispersed on the carbon black with an average particle size of 1.9 nm. The catalyst shows improved activity towards the methanol anodic oxidation and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), resulting from the high dispersion of active Pt component. It leads to increases in electrochemically accessible surface areas and ion channels, as well as easier charge-transfer at polymer/electrolyte interfaces. The high platinum utilization and high performance of Pt/Nafion-C catalyst make it a promising electrocatalyst for fuel cell application.