A series of nickle-cobalt binary alloys with different atomic ratio on graphite electrode for methanol and ethanol oxidation

Direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) has been considered greatly because of methanol reasonable price ,it’s also easily handle and stored.[1] However it is toxic , inflammable and non-renewable.[2] So ethanol is a good alternative feul to methanol and it doesn’t have the drawbacks of methanol[3] One of the impotant keys in direct liquid fuel cell(DLFC) is electrocatalyst. So finnding a new catalyst with greater performance and lower poisoning is necessary. Demirci [3] attempted to suggest new binary alloy as catalyst for direct liquid feul cell. His works were based on theories about metal d-shift band center and the segregation. One of the studied binary alloy by Demerci [3] is Ni-Co which has reasonable price and seems to be potentially good catalyst. In this work the electro-oxidation of methanol and ethanol were studied on the Ni-Co binary alloys on the graphite with varying the atomic percentages in the alloys. The catalysts were prepared by cycling over cathodic potential. The catalytic performances were investigated by cycling voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The results show the catalyst which has more cobalt ratio has significant higher response for both ethanol and methanol oxidation. On the other hand, the current magnitude of methanol oxidation is greater than ethanol in the same concentration. it seems that the future tracks for searching active catalyst are examining the other bimetallic alloys which seem to be active catalysts according to theoretical studies.