Strategies for probing pathways in the electrochemical oxidation of methanol and related small molecules at nanometer-scale metal catalysts

COLL 74

Carol Korzeniewski, Ganesh Vijayaraghavan, Wei Zhou, Lin Gao, and Prachak Inkaew. Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1061
The electrochemical oxidation of methanol and related small molecules has been of special interest in relation to fuel cell research. We are approaching the study of these reactions with electrochemical techniques in combination with in situ infrared spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and wet-analytical methods. This presentation will focus on reactions at carbon-supported catalysts. In situ infrared measurements are being performed by a procedure developed by the Weaver group, which involves adsorbing catalysts onto a reflective gold electrode to enable infrared sampling in a standard reflectance geometry. The influence that metal particle size distribution and spatial arrangement has on reaction pathways is being investigated by depositing metal particles on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite. The surface electrocatalytic properties of the supported particles are investigated with cyclic voltammetry. AFM is used to determine the catalyst size distribution and spatial arrangement at different stages of preparation and electrochemical characterization.