A comparison on the presence of iron ions in spongy zinc oxide as a support for palladium nanocatalysts towards diethylene glycol electrooxidation

fuel cell technology is a clean, sufficient and good-quality energy system. Preparation of suitable material as an electrocatalyst has a tremendous impact on the efficiency of the fuel cells. Supporting Pd on materials with high surface areas are main strategies to expand the ability of the electrocatalysts. In present work, the spongy zinc oxide (SZO) and the non-stoichiometric spongy zinc ferrite (NSZF) were fabricated. Then, the nanocatalyst Pd (NCPd) was placed on and in the surface of these spongy oxides by spontaneous redox reduction. The cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry results of as-prepared the NCPd/SZO and NCPd/NSZF electrocatalysts exhibit each two introduced electrocatalyst had significant ability in diethylene glycol oxidation. But results for the NCPd/NSZF electrocatalyst was slightly better than the NCPd/SZO electrocatalyst because of transfer of electrons among Fe2+ and Fe3+, and oxidation−reduction cycle between the high and low chemical valences of iron, leading to improve the electrocatalytic efficiency of palladium. In this report, we progress diethylene glycol as the fuel for first time. So, didn’t exist any comparable dada in other literature.

Keywords:

zinc ferrite , zinc oxide , fuel cells , Pd reduction