Electrospinning synthesis of porous carbon fiber supported Pt-SnO2 anode catalyst for direct ethanol fuel cell

Abstract Pt-SnO2 catalysts supported on modified carbon fibers were prepared by an electrospinning method with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as the carrier and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as the pore-forming agent. The physical-chemical property and catalytic performance of the as-synthesized composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, BET, Chronoamperometry and AC impedance. The results showed that the porous structure in the carbon fibers was formed after calcination at 800 °C in the presence of PVDF. When the weight ratio of PAN/PVDF was 1:0.8, the porous carbon fibers had the largest surface area of 374.85 m2 g−1, which was 3.3 times of carbon fibers prepared without PVDF. The in-situ formed porous structure in carbon fibers can provide more active sites for the catalytic reaction. Therefore, the porous carbon fiber supported Pt-SnO2 catalysts exhibited the best catalytic performance with the ethanol oxidation peak current value of 140.14 mA cm−2 and the electrochemical active area up to 54.296 m2 g−1. DEFC performance showed that the best potential was 0.7 V and the maximum of power density was 18.1 mW cm−2 when the oxygen flow rate and the temperature were 100 mL min−1 and 80 °C, respectively.