Continuous production of supported and shaped metal nanocatalysts using conveyor transport system
One of the major challenges in nanotechnology is to generate nanoparticles with controlled size, shape and composition and at the same time meet the commercial standards of mass manufacturing. The conventional colloidal synthetic approach, though has the ability to produce well-defined nanocrystals, often needs careful tuning of the reaction parameters to result in site-selective monomer attachment. Unfortunately, these methods cannot be easily scaled up by simply increasing the reaction volume, which inevitably bring about undesired perturbation in the system and thus cause nonuniformity in final products. In this dissertation, conveyor transport system was developed as a new technique to produce continuously a family of supported and shaped metal nanocatalysts in a single-step process. With carbon monoxide (CO) as a major species to mediate the surface structures of metals, highly uniform cubic Pt/C with narrow size distribution could be synthesized in a continuous fashion; shaped carbon-supported Pt-M (M=Ni, Co, Fe) alloys were also generated using the same technique, demonstrating the capability of this system for generating bimetallic or potentially ternary alloys with controlled size and shape. This system was further applied to core-shell nanoparticles, and the morphology and composition of the cores as well as the shell thickness could be finely tailored to further enhance the activity and stabiltiy of the as-made electrocatalysts towards oxygen reduction reaction. In the near future, we will focus on the continuous production of different structured noble/non-noble metal nanomaterials as well as the coupling of this system to annealing process and/or MEA manufacturing stage, moving towards production of the industrial application of these classes catalysts.
Conveyor transport system, Carbon monoxide (CO), Shape, Lignad, Nanoparticle, Nanocatalyst, Transition metal, Alloy, Core-shell, Platinum (Pt), Palladium (Pd), Electrocatalysis, Heterogeneous catalysis, Fuel cell, Methanol oxidation reaction (MOR), Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign