Cryogel carbon supports for DMFC-PtRu catalysts

Carbon supported PtRu is the catalyst of choice for the DMFC anode and, given the high cost of noble metals, much research effort is focusing on the development of high catalytic activity electrodes. One of the pursued strategies to provide high catalytic surface at low noble metal content is that of developing new carbon supports with high electric conductivity, high surface area and high mesoporosity in the 20-40 nm region for a high accessible surface area to catalyst and to monomeric units of Nafion and to favour the diffusion of chemical species involved in methanol oxidation. Cryogel carbons which are high conducting carbon networks featuring a high surface area and a high tunable mesoporosity along with the advantage of a low-cost preparation procedure based on freeze drying and pyrolysis of resorcinol-formaldehyde gels, should be suitable supports. Thus, we pursued the strategy of developing PtRu catalysts supported on mesoporous cryogel carbons and we deposited PtRu on carbon-Nafion substrate electrochemically, which is a promising technique because it provides the catalyst at the electrode three-phase boundary. Here we present and discuss preparation and characterization data of different mesoporous cryogel carbons as well as we report the catalytic activity of PtRu catalyst electrodeposited on cryogel carbon-Nafion supports for methanol oxidation in DMFC.