Carbon nitride durability

Developments in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesiis at the Bureau of Mines from 19 5 to I960 include a simple mechanism for chain growth and the use of iron nitrides as catalysts. The chain-growth schene can predict the carbon-number and isomer distributions for products from most catalysts with reasonable accuracy using only 2 adjustable parameters. Iron nitrides are active, durable catalysts that produce high yields of alcohols and no wax. During the synthesis, the nitrides are converted to carbonitrides. 

With this respect, the work from Atanasoski and coworkers is promising (compare section Transition Metal Carbides, Nitrides and Chalcogenides ) [35], By performing a heat treatment of their sputtered C-N iFe Aims, the activity was drastically enhanced but still much lower compared to macrocycle-based catalysts. However, when titanium carbide was used as support instead of carbon, a high stability was obtained. The fact that by changing the support, an essentially better durability was obtained is an important result as it shows that even for catalysts based on molecular centers, alternative support materials can be utilized and that the interaction between the support and the catalytic centers might be cmcial for the optimization of those catalysts for a fuel cell application. 

Transition metal carbides, such as tungsten carbide and its alloys, tantalum carbide, titanium carbide, and molybdenum carbide (Cowling et al, 1970,1971 Voorhies et al., 1972 Scholl et ah, 1992,1994 Borup et al., 2007), have been studied as catalysts for electrochemical reactions. However, it has been found that these transition metal carbides are unstable under high potentials and in acid solution, and this limits their application as PEM fuel cell catalysts (Borup et al., 2007). Transition metal nitrides have been studied as electrochemical catalysts in PEM fuel cell environments, and Zhong et al. (2006) showed that molybdenum nitride supported on carbon powder resulted in a cell performance of about 0.3 V at 0.2 A cm, and the catalyst was stable for 60 h of cell operation. However, the long-term performance durability is still questionable. 

Electro-catalyst supports play a vital role in ascertaining the performance, durability, and cost of PEMFC and DMFC systems. A myriad of nano-structured materials including carbon nanostructures, metal oxides, conducting polymers, transition metals nitrides and carbides, and many hybrid conjugates, have been exhaustively researched to improve the existing support and also to develop novel PEMFC/DMFC catalyst support. One of the main challenges in the immediate future is to develop new catalyst supports that improve the durability of the catalyst layer and, in a best-case scenario, also impact the electronic properties of the active phase to leapfrog to improve catalyst kinetics. 

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