Support materials which have various sizes of pore were applied to the electro-catalyst of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC). The surface area, pore size, pore volume and so on can affect on the morphological characteristics of active metals. As a result, the performance changes can be observed caused by the alternation of reactant mobility as well as electro-chemical reactivity. The bimodal type pores were designed to get diffusivity controllable electro-catalyst for PEFCs.
There has been several research activities on the preparation of porous carbons using templating method. However, it’s difficult to find the reports which deal the structural aspect of electrode in PEFCs.
In the present work, a imprinting method was used to synthesize bimodal nanoporous carbons. The bimodal property could be achieved by adopting SBA-15 and silica colloids at one time to the mesophase pitch (diameter = 4 µm). The noble active metals were loaded on the prepared bimodal nanoporous carbons. The resulting bimodal porous carbons and the electro-catalysts were characterized to compare the differences between conventional and home-made electro-catalysts by TEM, SEM, XRD, ICP, XPS, BET, Cyclic voltametry, and so on.