Two dimensional Cu based nanocomposite materials for direct urea fuel cell

Najrul Hussain, Mohammad Ali Abdelkareem*, Hussain Alawadhi, Abed Alaswad, Enas Taha Sayed

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In this work, Cu2O nanoparticles were successfully prepared onto the surface of two-dimensional graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) by using a simple solution chemistry approach. An environment-friendly reducing agent, glucose, was used for the synthesis of Cu2O NPs onto the surface of g-C3N4 without using any surfactant or additives. The surface composition, crystalline structure, morphology, as well as other properties have been investigated using XPS, XRD, SEM, FTIR, FESEM, EDS, etc. The electrochemical measurements of the prepared materials demonstrated that Cu2O exhibited a weak oxidation activity towards urea, while g-C3N4 has no activity towards urea oxidation. The Cu2O supported on the surface of g-C3N4 (Cu2O-g-C3N4) demonstrated a significant activity towards urea oxidation that reached two times that of the unsupported one. The significant increase in the performance was related to the synergetic effect between the Cu2O and g-C3N4 support. The prepared composite materials demonstrated high stability towards urea oxidation as confirmed from the stable current discharge for around 3 h without any noticeable degradation performance.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6051-6060
Number of pages10
JournalInternational Journal of Hydrogen Energy
Volume46
Issue number8
Early online date22 Jul 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jan 2021

Bibliographical note

© 2020, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Keywords

  • CuO Nanoparticles (NPs)
  • Cyclic voltametry (CV)
  • Direct urea fuel cell
  • Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS)
  • Graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN)
  • Two dimensional (2D)

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