Facile Enhancement in CO-Tolerance of a Polymer-Coated Pt Electrocatalyst Supported on Carbon Black: Comparison between Vulcan and Ketjenblack

The CO poisoning and low durability of the anode platinum electrocatalyst in the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) are the two crucial obstacles of the wide commercialization of the DMFC. In this study, we synthesized two different electrocatalysts using VulcanXC-72R (VC) and Ketjenblack (KB) as the carbon supporting material for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and long-term durability test, in which the carbon supporting materials were wrapped by poly[2,2'-(2,6-pyridine)-5,5'-bibenzimidazole] (PyPBI) before the platinum deposition and the fabricated electrocatalysts were coated by the poly(vinylphosphonic acid) (PVPA) via the base-acid reaction. We have found that the as-prepared KB/PyPBI/Pt/PVPA shows a higher durability (7% loss in ECSA) under the potential cycling from 1.0 to 1.5 V vs. RHE compared to that of the VC/PyPBI/Pt/PVPA, which showed a 20% loss in ECSA after 10 000 cycle-durability test. Meanwhile, the KB/PyPBI/Pt/PVPA shows a higher CO tolerance before and after the durability test compared to that of the VC/PyPBI/Pt/PVPA, especially under very high methanol concentration (4 M and 8 M), which is close to the practical application of the DMFC. The observed higher CO tolerance is due to the higher amount of the PVPA (14.6 wt %) in the KB/PyPBI/Pt/PVPA caused by the higher specific surface area of the KB (1232 m(2)/g) compared to the VC (235 m(2)/g).