Air-breathing laminar flow-based microfluidic fuel cell.

This communication reports the design and characterization of an air-breathing laminar flow-based microfluidic fuel cell (LFFC). The performance of previous LFFC designs was cathode-limited due to the poor solubility and slow transport of oxygen in aqueous media. Introduction of an air-breathing gas diffusion electrode as the cathode addresses these mass transfer issues. With this design change, the cathode is exposed to a higher oxygen concentration, and more importantly, the rate of oxygen replenishment in the depletion boundary layer on the cathode is greatly enhanced as a result of the 4 orders of magnitude higher diffusion coefficient of oxygen in air as opposed to that in aqueous media. The power densities of the present air-breathing LFFCs are 5 times higher (26 mW/cm2) than those for LFFCs operated using formic acid solutions as the fuel stream and an oxygen-saturated aqueous stream at the cathode ( approximately 5 mW/cm2). With the performance-limiting issues at the cathode mitigated, these air-breathing LFFCs can now be further developed to fully exploit their advantages of direct control over fuel crossover and the ability to individually tailor the chemical composition of the cathode and anode media to enhance electrode performance and fuel utilization, thus increasing the potential of laminar flow-based fuel cells.

An NMR determination of CO diffusion on platinum electrocatalysts.

We report the first direct measurement of CO diffusion on nanoparticle Pt electrocatalysts at the solid/liquid interface, carried out using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with a spin-labeling pulse sequence. Diffusion parameters were measured in the temperature range of 253-293 K for CO adsorbed on commercial Pt-black under saturation coverage. 2H NMR of the same system indicates that the electrolyte remains in the liquid state at temperatures where the CO diffusion experiments were performed. The CO diffusion parameters follow typical Arrhenius behavior with an activation energy of 6.0 +/- 0.4 kcal/mol and a pre-exponential factor of (1.1 +/- 0.6) x 10-8 cm2/s. Exchange between different CO populations, driven by a chemical potential gradient, is suggested to be the main mechanism for CO diffusion. The presence of the electrolyte medium considerably slows down the diffusion of CO as compared to that seen on surfaces of bulk metals under UHV conditions. This work opens up a new approach to the study of surface diffusion of adsorbed molecules on nanoparticle electrode catalysts, including the possibility of correlating diffusion parameters to catalytic activity in real world applications of broad general interest.