Microwave Polyol Synthesis of Pt/C Catalyst and its Application to Hydrolysis of Sodium Borohydride

Abstract

XC-72 carbon supported Pt catalyst was prepared by using a microwave heated ethylene glycol method and characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). For comparison, the same Pt/XC- 72 catalyst was also prepared by conventional heated ethylene glycol method. TEM image showed that microwave syn- thesized Pt nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed on the surface of carbon and had a narrow size distribution. The aver- age particle sizes of Pt nanoparticles synthesized with microwave irradiation and conventional heating method are 2.7 and 3.7 nm, respectively. The Pt/C catalysts exhibited four diffraction peaks that are indexed to the {1 1 1}, {2 0 0}, {2 2 0}, and {3 1 1} planes of Pt. Their catalytic performances were evaluated by hydrolysis of sodium borohydride. The micro- wave synthesized Pt/XC-72 catalyst exhibited higher catalytic activity than that synthesized with conventional heated eth- ylene glycol method.