Every year the environment becomes more polluted, and the impact of climate change is becoming more visible. We can do a lot ourselves for a cleaner environment and sustainable changes. Electrochemical catalysts can greatly contribute to cleaner production and lower consumption of fossil fuels. We speed up chemical reactions and do not change themselves. In their development, it is important that they are as selective as possible, corrosion resistant, mechanically stable, and sustainable. In fuel cells, which are an integral part of electric cars, platinum is most often used as a catalyst. It is a precious metal that is found in very low concentrations and its use is limited and quite expensive. One of the uses of electrochemical catalysts is also in the production of hydrogen peroxide. Such production is more environmentally friendly and more affordable.
Precisely because of the lack of platinum and the sense of finding new efficient electrochemical catalysts for various productions, I set about synthesizing only these. I prepared three different catalysts from reduced graphene oxide and decorated them with cobalt salts. After synthesis, it is reasonable to characterize the catalysts. Some of the characterization techniques we can perform are TGA – MS, XPS, SEM EDS, BET, ICP MS or AAS, RDE and RRDE electrochemical experiments. Based on the progress of the synthesis of electrochemical catalysts, I decided to perform Raman spectroscopy on two of them, take a photo with the help of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and then perform an elemental analysis (EDS). Synthesis procedures and measurement results are presented in the thesis.
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