Synthesis and Electrochemical Characterization of Electrically Conductive Porous Alumina Composite Modified By Nickel and Platinum Nanoparticles

Thanks to highly porous bone structure and three-dimensional nano-carbon networks in electrically conductive porous alumina (CPA) prepared by the combination of gel-casting and reductive sintering in inert atmosphere, recently a surge of increasing interest has been attracted to develop its various potential applications especially as catalyst support. In this work, CPA-based composites prepared by decoration with nickel and platinum nanoparticles indicate its potential applications especially as fuel cells. By uniformly dispersion of nickel and platinum nanoparticles with small sizes around 10 nm and 20 nm respectively on the surface of CPA, an increased electrochemical performance can be observed in 1 M NaOH solution. Raman spectroscopy, Field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been employed to detect the changes of structure and morphology during modification. Moreover, electrochemical measurements results of cyclic voltammetry prove their improved electro-catalytic activities toward oxygen reductive reaction by comparing with the classical graphite electrode, which is mainly attributed to the unique structure and surface modification of CPA.