Highly Dispersed Palladium Nanoparticles on Carbon-Decorated Porous Nickel Electrode: An Effective Strategy to Boost Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell up to 202 mW cm^-2

The low performance and low catalyst utilization of electrodes have been challenging issues for anion-exchange membrane direct liquid fuel cells (AEM DLFCs). Herein, a high-utilization and high-activity three-dimensional electrode that enables palladium nanoparticles to be directly dispersed on carbon-decorated porous nickel is reported by a facile and well-controlled fabricating method. The as-synthesized Pd@C-Ni electrode possesses an electrochemically active surface area as high as 121.8 m² g^-1, 1 order of magnitude higher than conventional Pd/C@CP electrode. The electro-oxidation of ethanol in Pd@C-Ni shows a low onset potential (0.3 V) and a high peak current density (0.16 A cm^-2) in alkaline environment. When Pd@C-Ni acts as anode in an AEM direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC), the peak power density up to 202 mW cm^-2 is achieved at 60 °C, representing the best performance for oxygen-based AEM DEFCs reported in the open literature under the same operating temperature. Additionally, a stable 16 h discharge at 100 mA cm^-2 demonstrates its good stability. This work presents an effective strategy for high-performance DLFCs.