Investigation of glycerol electrooxidation activity of carbon supported PdCu bimetallic electrocatalyst

In this study, Pd/C, Cu/C, and a series of PdCu/C bimetallic electrocatalysts were prepared by microwave-assisted modified polyol method to determine glycerol electrooxidation reaction (GOR) activities. The effect of microwave duration on catalyst structure and GOR activity was investigated on PdCu/C bimetallic catalysts. Also, a commercial Pd/C (com-Pd/C) was used to compare catalytic activities with prepared samples. Electrocatalysts were characterized by using X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES), and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analyses. In addition, the activity and stability of electrocatalysts for GOR were examined by using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA). In XRD results, the formation of PdCu alloy structure was observed successfully in all bimetallic catalysts. It was found that the PdCu electrocatalyst with microwave duration of 150 s (PdCu150) was exhibited homogeneous dispersion in TEM images. The particle size of 6.45 nm for PdCu150 was identified from TEM. Furthermore, the performance results were indicated that PdCu150 has the highest activity (36.02 mA/cm²) and stability compared to Pd/C (8.56 mA/cm²), and com-Pd/C (10.23 mA/cm²) in glycerol electrooxidation.