The Preparation Of Transition Metal Nanomaterials, As Well As The Preliminary Study Of The Catalytic Material As A Fuel Cell

Transition metal nanoparticles consisting of particles with diameter less than 100 nm have high-surface area, high atom ratio and dangling bonds. Owing to their nanometer scale size, transition metal nanoparticles have been used in catalytic material, electronic material, magnetic material and so on. Recently, a number of techniques has been used for the preparation of nanoparticles. One popular synthetic method is a socalled water-in-oil(w/o) microemulsion technique that can prevent aggregation and modify the nanoparticles surface by various surfactant. With the promise of a better control of particle size, shape, size distribution, and catalytic element, and the flexible and easy operation of fabrication process, the preparation of transition metal nanoparticles by microemulsion techniques has obvious superiority.In this thesis work, pure Fe, Co, Ni and Fe-Co-Ni alloy nanoparticles were prepared using KBH4 reduction in a water-in-oil reverse microemulsion of water-Triton X-100-propan-2-ol-cyclohexane. A series of affecting factors were studied accordingly. Nanoparticles formed in the microemulsions were characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD), scanning electron microscope(SEM). The results show the alloy nanoparticles should be synthesized over 1h in N₂ atmosphere at 25-30℃and washed with acetone and ethanol. The nanoparticles have a narrow size distribution with an average diameter of 1 -3nm.The anodic reaction of direct ethanol fuel cell was elementarily researched in this paper. The preparation and the catalytic properties for ethanol oxidation of these transition metal were investigated. Catalysts for ethanol electro-oxidation in ethanol fuel cell, especially non-noble metal catalytic materials are the one of most challenging problem for the configuration of fuel cell. All these results provide rich information for understanding the ethanol fuel cell, and could be helpful to the development of microemulsion technique.