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Prof. Fabrizio Pirri
Design and synthesis of hierarchically porous N-doped carbon supports for oxygen reduction reaction catalysts for hydrogen fuel cell application
keywords CATALYSTS, ELECTROCATALYSIS, FUEL CELL, OXYGEN REDUCTION REACTION, POROUS N-DOPED CARBON SUPPORTS
Reference persons JUQIN ZENG
Research Groups Prof. Fabrizio Pirri
Thesis type MASTER'S DEGREE
Description To meet future economy and infrastructure zero emission goals, polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have been raising increased attention for automotive and stationary applications. Nevertheless, further improvements are necessary to reduce production costs to realize further market penetration of fuel cell technology. One major issue is the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) taking place on the cathode side, resulting in high demand of platinum group metals (PGMs) for the cathode reaction. To achieve economically efficient automotive application, it has been proposed that the overall Pt loading per vehicle has to be reduced to below 5 g. For this purpose, several approaches were made to realize Pt cathode loadings below 0.1 mgPt cm−2 without sacrificing fuel cell performance, whereas the sate-of-the-art loading is around 0.3 mgPt cm–2. At the same time, automotive fuel cell stack operating strategy requires a highly active catalyst layer to achieve high PEMFC performance under low current densities. Therefore, it is crucial to support the Pt nanoparticles on a high surface area carbon to reduce poisoning effects from the ionomer compared to low surface area supported ones.
This project will focus on the design and synthesis of hierarchically porous N-doped carbon supports for low-Pt catalysts, including: 1) synthesis of porous N-doped carbon materials; 2) characterize the porosity, morphology and chemical composition of the materials through BET, XRD, EDX, FESEM, XPS, and so on; 3) support Pt nanoparticles on the carbon supports; 4) test the Pt/C catalysts in a rotating ring disk electrode setup and gas diffusion electrode setup.
Deadline 06/05/2025
PROPONI LA TUA CANDIDATURA