Synthesis of Ultrafine Mesoporous Tungsten Carbide by High-energy Ball Milling and Its Electrocatalytic Activity for Methanol Oxidation
✍ Scribed by Chunan Ma; Zhaoyang Chen; Fengming Zhao
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 191 KB
- Volume
- 29
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0256-7660
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✦ Synopsis
Ultrafine mesoporous tungsten carbide (WC) was prepared from as-synthesized mesoporous WC using high-energy ball milling treatment. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and nitrogen adsorption-desorption techniques were used to characterize the samples. Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface areas of WC samples increased with the increasing ball milling time and kept constant at 10-11 m 2 •g -1 for over 9
h. The electrocatalytic properties of methanol electro-oxidation at WC powder microelectrodes were investigated by cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, and quasi-steady-state polarization techniques. The results reveal that ball-milled WC exhibits higher activity for methanol electro-oxidation than as-synthesized mesoporous WC. The suitability of ball-milled WC for methanol electro-oxidation is better than platinum (Pt) micro-disk, although the current peak is not as high as the Pt micro-disk. Moreover, increasing the methanol concentration and reaction temperature promotes methanol electro-oxidation on ultrafine mesoporous WC.