Muhammad Arif Nadeem
Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan
Title: Metal-organic frameworks towards functional materials: Energy storage applications
Biography
Biography: Muhammad Arif Nadeem
Abstract
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are exciting class of materials which showed their potential in variety of applications such as gas adsorption, magnetism, catalysis etc. We are trying to explore the possibilities of converting as synthesized MOFs towards energy conversion materials. A variety of porous carbon (PC) samples were prepared by direct carbonization of variety of porous metal-organic frameworks at various temperatures under inert atmosphere. The synthesized carbon materials were checked for super capacitive behavior. Furthermore high surface area PC was deposited with PtM (M = Fe, Ni, Co and Cu (20%) metal loading) nanoparticles by using polyol reduction method and different catalysts were designed for direct ethanol and methanol fuel cell (DEFC) applications. The results showed that PtFe/PC catalyst combination exhibited superior performance amongst the other options. The electrocatlytic capability of the catalyst for ethanol electroxidation was investigated using cyclic voltammetry, and direct ethanol single cell testing. The results were compared with that of Pt-Fe and Pt supported on Vulcan XC 72 carbon catalysts (Pt-Fe/XC-72 and Pt/XC-72) prepared via same method. The catalyst PtFe/PC developed in this work showed outstanding normalized activity per gram of Pt (6.8 mA/gPt) and superior power density (121 mW/cm2 at 90 °C) compared to commercially available carbon supported catalysts. The current work is in progress for the testing of other cheap metal combinations. The new field has attractive position in the field of fuel cell applications.