Graphene Supported Silver Nanocrystals Preparation for Efficient Oxygen Reduction in Alkaline Fuel Cells

The silver nanocrystals (AgNCs) anchored on graphene oxide (GO) catalysts have been synthesized by a facile chemical reduction and nontemplate method using ascorbic acid (AA) as reducing agent and have successfully employed as a cathode catalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in direct alkaline fuel cells (DAFCs). The morphological characterizations demonstrate that the AgNCs have crystalline form and grafted onto reduced graphene oxide (AgNCs/rGO_AA). Comparatively better dispersion and higher population of AgNCs have observed on AA treated AgNCs/rGO than NaBH4 which is known as conventional reducing agent. The electrochemical catalysis in 0.1 M KOH electrolyte has demonstrated that the AgNCs/rGO_AA has an excellent electrocatalytic activity for ORR in alkaline media compared to the other tested electrodes. Particularly, it shows 40% higher mass activity with large specific activity against 20 wt% Pt/C with faster electron transfer rate per O-2. Moreover, the reaction kinetic parameters have confirmed that the ORR at AgNCs/rGO_AA catalyst not only follows a 4e(-) process with lowering H2O2 formation but also proceeds on with good stability and fuel selectivity in DAFCs. (C) The Author(s) 2016. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.