I have been researching on non-PGM catalysts for PEM fuel cells. I came to know that carbon materials like graphene and CNT's have high conductivity and suffers from corrosion. If we use carbon materials then we also need to use a lot of loading to match the current densities supplied by commercial Pt/C fuel cells. Can anyone direct me in my research in which direction should I focus?
Have you tried to work on nitrogen doped carbon? Perhaps you may have some nitrogen functionalities that are stable in acid electrolyte depending on the integral structure you obtain based on the nitrogen and carbon precursors you choose and also heat treatment temperature. You may also look at transition metal with/without nitrogen doped carbon. If you choose to work on nitrogen doped carbon with transition metal, be sure to carry out acid washing/leaching afterward. So that you may have only "metal bonded to nitrogen or carbon" that are stable at molecular level.
This is such an open question. If we talk about carbon support materials as you said graphene and CNTs are some of the most used carbon supports, there are another allotropic carbon structures like graphene oxide, exfoliated CNTs and as Dr. Bukola said Nitrogen-doped carbon. Regardless the material you want to use you should pay attention in the superficial area that each material can offer you to support nanoparticulated NPG metals. It is worth to mention that most on NPG materials for PEM´s should be evaluated in alkaline medium to avoid the aggressive media and corrosion issues, so I strongly suggest you perform your electrochemical experiments in alkaline media. Here also is the link for a recent review which talks about LT-PEM systems.
Article What Can We Learn in Electrocatalysis, from Nanoparticulated...
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