Oxygen Plasma Functionalized Graphene Nanoplatelets As Support for Pt Catalyst

Fuel cell technology offers an attractive combination of highly efficient fuel utilization and environmentally friendly operation. Numerous efforts have been made in the past decade to develop materials for proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Among them, the catalyst support used for decreasing the usage of noble metals (e.g. platinum) and increase the utilization of catalyst is one of the key materials.

Since the discovery of graphene, a great deal of work has been focused on the development of graphene for energy conversion and storage applications because of its high surface area, high degree of graphitization and excellent electrical conductivity. The highly oriented basal plane structures in pristine graphene may provide many of the desired properties, however, results show poor wetting and reduced interaction with deposited metal particles when used as an electrocatalyst support. To overcome these problems, graphene is subjected to surface modification. In this work, we have used oxygen plasma treatment for the functionalization of Graphene Nanoplatelets (GnP) and then Pt nanoparticles were synthesized by a simple microwave process in the presence of ionic liquids on the functionalized GnP. The electrocatalysts were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques, and their electrocatalytic activity towards methanol oxidation was studied and compared to a conventional carbon support.