Development of composite non-platinum IrFe (1:16)/C nanoparticle as novel anodic catalyst in PEMFC

The active, carbon-supported 10 wt.% Ir-40wt.% Fe (1:16, atomic ratio) nanoparticle catalyst was successfully synthesized by an EG reduction method as novel, suitable anode electrode materials for PEMFCs applications. IrFe nanoparticles showed a narrow particle size distribution centered around 1.5-2 nm, and were uniformly dispersed on Vulcan XC-72 supports. In-situ cyclic voltammetry technique (CV) was used to characterize the performance of PEMFC as anode catalyst. It was found that the 10% Ir-40% Fe/C catalyst affects the performance of electrocatalyst significantly based on the discharge characteristics of the fuel cell. High cell performance of a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) on the anode was achieved with a loading of 0.1 mg cm(-2) 10% Ir-40% Fe/C catalyst, which results in a maximum a power density of 889.6 mW cm(-2). This value is 32% higher performance than that for commercially available Pt/C catalyst. It strongly suggested that the novel IrFe/C catalyst proposed in this work could be promising for PEMFC.