Novel palladium-guanine-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite as efficient electrocatalyst for methanol oxidation reaction
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2019
Abstract
The agglomeration of metal catalysts can limit the performance of fuel cells. Herein, an easy, scalable, one-pot microwave-assisted method is proposed to introduce guanine, which is a nucleobase found in deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid, to the reduced graphene oxide-supported palladium via noncovalent functionalization. Considering the abundant amino, amide, and imino functional groups of guanine that act as anchoring sites, palladium nanoparticles of various shapes such as triangular, rectangular, circular, and diamond are uniformly distributed. The guanine itself is revealed to be catalytically active toward methanol oxidation reaction, serving as second catalyst. Consequently, the as-produced nanocomposite has a larger electrochemically active surface area (111.98 m2 g−1 vs. 63.80 m2 g−1), greater methanol electro-oxidation ability (1017.42 mA mg−1 vs. 359.80 mA mg−1), and higher stability in alkaline medium than its counterpart without guanine.
Keywords
A. Graphene, A. Palladium nanoparticles, A. Guanine, B. Noncovalent functionalization, D. Methanol oxidation reaction
Divisions
fac_eng,CHEMISTRY,nanocat
Funders
Frontier Research Grant grant number FG0011-17AFR,Postgraduate Research Grant (PPP) grant number PG207-2015A,Talent Fund of South China University of Technology and Nippon Sheet Glass Foundation for Materials Science and Engineering (NSG Foundation) research grant no. IF014-2017,AUN/SEED-Net, JICA, University of Malaya and the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia
Publication Title
Materials Research Bulletin
Volume
112
Publisher
Elsevier