Synthesis of novel Mesoporous Fullerene and its application to electro-oxidation of methanol

TL;DR

This paper reports a new synthesis method for mesoporous fullerene and demonstrates its enhanced catalytic activity for methanol electro-oxidation in fuel cells, outperforming commercial carbon black.

Contribution

It introduces a novel one-pot synthesis technique for mesoporous fullerene with high surface area and demonstrates its application as an effective catalyst in methanol fuel cells.

Findings

Mesoporous fullerene has high surface area and ordered porosity.

Mesoporous fullerene-Pt composite shows superior electro-oxidation performance.

Potential application in fuel cell technology.

Abstract

One pot synthetic technique was used to synthesize mesoporous fullerene using highly ordered mesoporous template such as KIT6-150 and SBA-15-150. Highly ordered porous fullerene with cross linkage between the fullerene molecules was obtained at high temperature 900 0C. This type of highly ordered and high surface area mesoporous fullerence was used as catalyst to study anodic performance in sulphuric acid medium. Finally, it was used to test its catalytic activity for electrochemical methanol oxidation. For anodic performance and methanol oxidation experiment, mesofullerene was impregnated with pt-nano particles. Mesoporous Fullerene-Pt nano-composite showed quite an unusual electrochemical property for electro oxidation of methanol and good anodic performance in acidic electrolyte. The anodic performance was much better than the commercially available carbon black. This short communiation is a report mentioning the synthetic strategy to prepare mesofullerene and electrode preparation to study its electrochemical performance. This mesofullerene is potential catalyst for fuel cell application.