A Ternary Catalyst for Dimethyl Ether Electrooxidation

While dimethyl ether (DME) has been long viewed as a promising alternative fuel for direct fuel cells, DME electrooxidation in general and at PtRu catalysts in particular has remained kinetically handicapped relative to methanol oxidation at PtRu alloys. In this work, a ternary carbon-supported PtRuPd catalyst was developed for DME electrooxidation using the polyol method. The as-synthesized PtRuPd/C catalyst shows higher activity for DME oxidation than the state-of-the-art Pt50Ru50/C catalyst (HiSPEC® 12100) in both the electrochemical cell and fuel cell testing. The effect is likely due to the activation of the C-O bond cleavage by Pd. An extensive physical characterization, including XRF, TGA, SEM, TEM and XRD, was conducted to provide insights into the composition, morphology, and structure of the PtRuPd/C catalyst.