engleski

Nickel-based/Conducting Polymer Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution

Hydrogen is increasingly considered as the fuel of the future. The electrolysis of water represents the only renewable and fully environmentally friendly process of hydrogen production, without co-generation of a green-house gas. The use of solid polymer electrolyte membrane type generators (PEMHG) based on the fuel-cell technology to produce hydrogen from demineralized water would offer a number of advantages compared to the classical alkaline process currently used, especially for residential and small scale applications. Therefore, there is a major need to develop new active, efficient, stable, and cheap electrocatalysts for water splitting in the PEM hydrogen generator, which would offer low overpotentials for the HER at high current densities. We have investigated a possibility of using conducting polymers, polypyrrole and polyaniline, as a catalyst substrate (matrix) for the development of Ni-based HER catalysts with a possibility of their use in the PEMHG. The mechanisms and kinetics of the HER in an acidic medium has been investigated using electrochemical techniques, while the morphology and structure of the catalyst has been studied using SEM and XRD techniques. It has been shown that Ni/PANI/GC offers a significantly higher electrocatalytic activity compared to Ni electrodeposited on a Cu substrate (Ni/Cu). This is due to the higher real-to-geometric surface area ratio (surface roughness), and also due to the higher intrinsic catalytic activity of the Ni/PANI electrocatalyst.

HER; Electrocatalysis; Ni based catalysts; Conducting polymers; Polypyrrole

nije evidentirano